
Class ___i5i__d & 5 

Book !.__ 

()opyiightNi_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Christ the Apocalypse 



BY 
THE REV. JAMES COOKE SEYMOUR 



A 



Author of ** The Gifts of the Royal Family ; or, Sys- 
tematic Christian Beneficence^^ [Prize Essay); 
** Voices from the Throne; or, God'' s 
Calls to Faith and Obedience,^'' etc. 



CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & PYE 
N E W YORK: E A T O N & M A I N S 



.5^ 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 


Two Copies 


Received 


FEB 2 


1903 


Copyright 


Entry 
XXc. No. 


^99 

COPY 


7 



COPYRIGHT, 1902 BY 
JENNINGS & PYE 



CONTENTS 

Section I. 

THE FOUNDATION 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Historic Christ — The Divine Christ, - 7 

II. Scripture, 11 

III. Christ THE Apocalypse OF God's Existence AND 15 

Character, 25 

IV. Creation, 31 

V. Man, - - - 37 

VI. Christ the Apocalypse of Providence, 

Section XX* 

GRACE 

I. Christ the Apocalypse of Sin, - ... 47 

II. Redemption, 52 

III. Old Testament History, ----- 61 

IV. Old Testament Prophecy, - - - . 64 
V. Sacrifices, -------- 69 

VI. The Holy Spirit, 81 

VII. Faith, 85 

VIII. The Soul's Renewal, 108 

IX. The Christ-Life, 112 

X. Christian Diversity, 120 

XI. Prayer. - - - 128 



Contents 

Section III. 

PROBLEMS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. War, 139 

II. Labor and Capital, . . . . . 145 

III. Wealth and its Uses, 150 

IV. Law of Giving, - ..... 163 
V. Patriotism, - - 173 

VI. Modern Renaissance, 182 

VII. Literature and the Press, - - - - 190 

VIII. Education, - - 201 

IX. Science and Religion, 220 

X. Human Religion and Divin]'., - - - 222 

XI. Sociability, 226 

XII. Service, - 234 

XIII. Self-Sacrifice, 240 

XIV. Moral Reforai, 247 

XV. The Church, - - - - - - - 257 

XVI. The Sabbath, 279 

XVII. Woman, 285 

Section XV. 

THE FUTURE 

I. The World's Outlook, 317 

II. Judgment, 334 

III. Sin's Last Evolution, 341 

IV. Above, 344 



SECTION I 

Ci^e iJfownDatton 



CHAPTER I 

THE HISTORIC CHRIST—THE DIVINE 
CHRIST 

T T is an easy thing to believe that the historic 
■*• Christ existed ; it is utterly impossible for any 
sane mind to believe that he never did. The 
monumental facts proving that Jesus Christ lived 
on the earth are as solid as the pyramids of Egypt 
and as numerous as the stars of heaven. 

To believe that Christ never existed is to turn 
nineteen centuries of history into chaos. No in- 
fidel can write a letter to his friend but the first 
touch of his pen admits that Jesus was born in 
Bethlehem. The chief relation that five hundred 
millions of civilized men hold to the other thou- 
sand millions of the race is based almost wholly 
on this great historic fact. In all the sweep of 
scientific and historic investigation no fact has 
ever been more fully and satisfactorily demon- 
strated, and few, if any, so much so as this. Nine- 

7 



8 Christ the Apocalypse 

teen hundred years of ever-gathering proof can 
no more be swept away than you can sweep the 
sun from the heaven by closing your eyeHds. 
The march of time has been set by the sentinel- 
star of Bethlehem's Babe, and the world's history 
must forever go on in cycles of the Christian era. 

Theories, speculations, philosophies, are 
strewn in multitudes all along the shores of time, 
and many unborn ones will yet be wrecked upon 
its strand; but here is a fact towering like an 
Alpine mountain, which nothing can overturn or 
diminish or disturb, rooted in the very heart of 
earth, and whose top reaches unto heaven. 

The real Divinity of Jesus Christ is as much 
a fact as that he ever existed on earth. It is as 
certain that Christ was Divine as that he could 
not lie. To believe that Jesus Christ was not 
Divine is to believe that he is an awful deceiver 
of men. His w^hole career on earth was one con- 
tinued declaration of his Divine character and 
mission. He thought it no robbery to be equal 
with God. He spake with authority — the author- 
ity of God — and not as the scribes. This Divine 
claim is the most striking feature in all his teach- 
ings, miracles, prophecies, promises, threatenings, 



Christ — Historic and Divine 9 

sufferings. It was made and reiterated in the 
strongest and most unmistakable terms in every 
conceivable form and on all sorts of occasions. 

Every attribute of the Godhead that we know 
of he professed to exercise over devils and men, 
earth and sky, sea and land, disease and death, 
past, present, and future, judgment and mercy, 
heaven and hell, time and eternity. He constantly 
accepted a worship due only to God and a lan- 
guage that could properly only be applied to God. 
It was this claim that enraged the Jews, "Thou, 
being a man, makest thyself God;" and for that 
they put him to death. If all the lofty preten- 
sions of men in all ages of the world were gath- 
ered into one, it would be a small matter indeed 
compared with what Christ claimed for himself. 
The ambition of millions of earth's most am- 
bitious sons were as nothing to the ambition of 
this Son of Mary. Christ's claims and plans 
and commands tower in absolutely infinite alti- 
tude beyond the wildest dreams of human fancy. 

If Jesus was not a Divine Being, if he was 
not properly God, then all these tremendous 
claims are tremendous falsehoods; are, in fact, 
tremendous blasphemies too terrible and too 



lo Christ the Apocalypse 

execrable for the human tongue to describe or the 
human mind adequately to conceive of. If Jesus 
be not God, then he was an impostor far beyond 
all the impostors this world has ever seen to- 
gether. Whether Jesus Christ was truly Divine 
or a liar infinitely surpassing the father of lies 
himself— and there is really no standing ground 
between these alternatives — sixty generations of 
men have found no difficulty in deciding. The 
latter is too horrible, too impossible, for the hu- 
mand mind to believe for a moment; the former 
is the only one left for it to believe at all. 



CHAPTER II 
SCRIPTURE 

TXT" HAT the Divine Man Jesus Christ says 
^ ^ must be true, for it is simply God speak- 
ing to men. Christ's attitude towards the Old 
Testament is the only right attitude we can take 
towards the Old Testament. What was Christ's 
attitude towards the Old Testament? It was one 
of fearless investigation. "Search the Scrip- 
tures," he said. That meant thorough explora- 
tion on all lines open to human intelligence, in- 
dustry, and earnest quest of truth. Christ ex- 
plored the Old Testament in that way himself. 
If Higher Criticism means the freest possible 
study of the Old Testament as to its authenticity, 
authority, subject matter, supreme purposes, ulti- 
mate end, then Christ was the highest of all 
Higher Critics. Certainly, let men search the 
Old Testament Scriptures down to the foundation, 
all the way up through every atom of its struc- 



1 2 Christ the Apocalypse 

ture, to the very top-stone. It will be all the 
better for the Old Testament, and it will be all 
the better for the men who search these Holy 
Scriptures, for they will find throughout that 
"they are they that testify of Jesus." 

Christ was no destructive critic. He came not 
to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill. 
Christ's criticism destroyed not a particle of Old 
Testament truth or Old Testament authority, but 
expanded and expounded and emphasized both 
to the glory of God and the good of mankind. 
Honest criticism will always do the same. And 
yet Christ was the most destructive of all Old 
Testament critics. He annihilated without mercy 
all merely human interpretations and additions 
and traditional falsities superimposed on the Old 
Testament — everything that was "teaching for 
doctrines the commandments of men," and of 
which there was much in his day. 

Abundant examples of all kinds of human in- 
terference with the Scriptures of truth Christ has 
left us, and he has shown us how to deal with 
each and every one of them. Christ's loyalty 
to the Old Testament was supreme. It was to 



Scripture 1 3 

him the Word of God. To it he appealed as to 
the bar of God. On it he built the whole fabric 
of his Divine claims, his doctrinal system, and the 
certainties of all the hopes he held out to men. 
His references to it were continuous, compre- 
hensive, profoundly reverent, and with a confi- 
dence that admitted of no manner of doubt. By 
it he w^as prepared to stand or fall, in the equal 
certainty that it was God's Word as that he was 
God's Son. This must be our attitude to the Old 
Testament too; for on any other terms we dis- 
credit Christ himself, and set up a standard of 
judgment other than that of the Infallible Judge 
of all. 

Christ himself is the only authorization that 
the New Testament needs ; it is the only authoriza- 
tion that it really has. It has absolutely nothing 
in it but Christ and him crucified. He alone is 
the Alpha and Omega of it all. The widest sweep 
of its Divine philosophy, as in the Epistles of 
Paul, never tower higher than the personal Christ 
— never go deeper than his character, life, and 
work. If Christ be indeed God manifest in the 
flesh, it is all true, for it is he himself who speaks 



14 Christ the Apocalypse 

in it all, in his own voice or through his disciples. 
If Christ be not Divine, the entire New Testament 
is a fabrication of lies which, in gigantic gran- 
deur and superdemoniac genius and boundless 
audacit)^ is utterly without parallel in all the an- 
nals of time. 



CHAPTER III 

CHRIST IS THE APOCALYPSE OF GOD'S 
EXISTENCE AND CHARACTER 

"T^OES God exist? The best answer to that 
-■— ^ is the same as we give to the question, Does 
man exist? Facts are in both cases equally con- 
clusive. Ten thousand arguments might be ad- 
duced to prove the existence of man on this earth ; 
but one living man is worth far more than them 
all. Ten thousand arguments may be adduced — 
and often have been — to prove the existence of 
God; but the Divine Christ, living on this earth 
for thirty years and more, is worth far more than 
them all. God in person trod this earth, and men 
beheld his glory — the glory as of the Only-be- 
gotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. 
God's answer to the atheist is himself — Christ 
Jesus, God manifest in the flesh. If he does not 
accept this proof, does he really want any ? 

Christ is God seen of men. To see God is the 
15 



1 6 Christ the Apocalypse 

natural and supreme desire of the human soul. 
There is nothing strange or wrong in this any 
more than for a child to wish to look into his 
father's face. Out of the perversion of this law- 
ful desire has sprung much of the idolatries of 
earth. Men can not see God as they wish ; there- 
fore they make gods such as they can see. These 
are, for the most part, impersonations of things 
viciously human or diabolically bad. Doubtless 
Adam in innocence found his chief joy in seeing 
God ; that is, in beholding some visible manifesta- 
tion of the Divine Presence ; for eyes of flesh could 
not endure the unclouded glory of God's face. 
*'I beseech thee, shew me thy glory," was not 
alone the fervent prayer of Moses, but of good 
men of all ages ; but the answer has always been, 
"No man hath seen God at any time." But just 
as true is it that "Christ Jesus, the Only-begotten 
Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath 
declared him." 

Christ is the Apocalypse of God. God, in him, 
comes forth in full sight of men. The incarna- 
tion of the Deity in a human being reveals a close 
view of God, shorn of many awful mysteries 
which pertain to the incomprehensible Jehovah. 



Existence and Character 17 

We talk to God as a man with his friend. We 
study the Divine attributes at work in a being 
who is one of ourselves. We are drawn to the 
very heart of the Eternal through the kinship of 
a brother. 

As we look at the Divine Jesus we need not 
ask, "Is God a Person?" We see that without 
asking. All the deep speculations of the human 
mind respecting God in the abstract are forgotten 
as we walk and talk with the personal Jesus of 
Nazareth. Christ speaks of his Father as the 
glorious God, living, acting, speaking, command- 
ing, witnessing, enduring in all the plenitude of 
the Divine attributes. If this does not mean that 
the Divine Father is a Person, it would be hard 
to understand how there can be such a thing as 
a personality at all. 

Christ's allusions to the Holy Spirit — and 
they are many — are always in reference to one 
by whom he himself was inspired, by whom he 
cast out devils, and blasphemy against whom he 
pronounced an unpardonable sin. If the Holy 
Spirit is not indeed God in person, what honest 
meaning or what meaning at all can there be in 
Christ's words? Nowhere did Christ ever hint 



1 8 Christ the Apocalypse 

that there are three Gods. He emphatically in- 
dorsed the ancient inspired declaration, "Hear, 
O Israel ; the Lord thy God is one Lord !" The 
entire New Testament is one continued enuncia- 
tion of the positive unity of the Godhead ; that is, 
it teaches Christ's doctrine on that point through- 
out. But is there not a flat contradiction here? 
Yes, if Christ could contradict himself or set 
forth doctrines which he knew were false or ut- 
terly irreconcilable. If Christ knew that these 
doctrines were level to the full comprehension 
of the human mind in its present state, would he 
not have made the whole matter clear to men? 
And if he has not attempted to do that, must he 
not have had good reasons for not making the 
attempt ? 

What is the true character of God? What 
God is, is best determined by what he does. 
Christ in action is the Apocalypse of God's char- 
acter. As Christ stilled the tempestuous sea, or 
walked on its waves, multiplied the loaves and 
fishes at his will, cast out demons from the souls 
of men, touched into health all manner of diseased 
men and women, called back the dead to life again, 
raised his own dead body from the tomb, — it is 



Existence and Character 19 

nothing less than the omnipotent power of God 
these facts proclaim. But it is only samples, or 
indeed mere hints, of that Omnipotence that we 
see. There are infinite reserves of power behind 
all this. What Christ did is as nothing to what 
he could do. His miracles of power are the most 
impressive exhibitions of God's almightiness the 
world ever saw; but it is what they suggest far 
more than anything else in which lies their most 
majestic revelations. 

It is the same with Christ's utterances. The 
great truths Christ taught are but the rich nug- 
gets of gold disclosing the fact that in him lay hid 
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 
Christ sweeps the circle of Divine knowledge as 
far as w^e can know or need it on earth; but it 
is gloriously incomplete, as it is but the threshold 
of truth; its mighty temple lies outlined in the 
infinite beyond. All things earthly and heavenly, 
human and superhuman, felt the touch of Christ — 
often of the faintest kind — but it is enough to 
show that he is there, that his omnipresent su- 
premacy is everywhere. Christ measured the 
height of his love of purity by the depth of his 
hatred of all impurity ; and both by the infinitude 



20 Christ the Apocalypse 

of his own sacrifice. For ''once in the end of the 
world he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice 
of himself." This is the holiness of God. 

Christ is the Apocalypse of the Divine Maj- 
esty. His transfiguration on the Mount was but 
something that marked his whole career. The 
rays of his Divine Majesty were continually flash- 
ing forth through the thin veil of his flesh, from 
his birth in Bethlehem, amid the songs of angels, 
the beams of his attendant star, and the worship 
of the Orient kings, to his exit from earth as he 
ascended to the skies, while a cloud received him 
from the sight of men. 

God's infinite fearlessness, or courage, as we 
might call it, has its highest expression in Christ. 
The chivalry of Jesus was that of a solitary war- 
rior facing unmoved the whole universe of evil. 
He entered the lists with all the forces of sin 
combined. "Of the people there was none with 
him." Alone he trod the wine-press of the right- 
eous wrath of God. Neither the "fox Herod" nor 
the fierce wolves of the Sanhedrin, nor the bloody 
soldiers of Rome, nor the strong "bulls of 
Bashan" around his cross, nor the shameful 



Exislence and Character 21 

agonies of his crucifixion, nor the base treachery 
of his disciple, nor the grim joy of hell as it 
emptied its fury upon him as the belching of a 
mighty volcano, moved one jot his intrepid soul. 
Through it all he is ever the immovable "Rock 
of Ages, the strong Lord, mighty in battle." 

Christ is the Apocalypse of God's infinite self- 
respect and dignity. His consciousness of moral 
perfection was as absolute as that perfection itself, 
and both were maintained untarnished and un- 
touclied. "Which of you convicteth me of sin?'* 
was his broad challenge to those subtle critics 
whose eyes were ever fixed on microscopic trans- 
gressions of the law. Christ did not run after 
the high priest and the rulers of the Jews, nor did 
he run away from one of them, Nicodemus, when 
he came to discuss the great concerns of religion. 

Nothing could ruffle or disturb or discon- 
cert his equanimity and self-possession. When 
charged with collusion with the prince of demons, 
his indignant soul at once placed that sin at the 
summit of all crimes that men could commit. To 
the flippant Herod, who wished to see him work 
a sample miracle, as he would have wished a 



22 Christ the Apocalypse 

mountebank perform a clever trick, he stood in 
absolute silence. To Pilate's garrulous questions 
he answered him not a word. At the bar of 
Caiaphas, when all other evidence against him 
had broken down, he calmly supplied all the evi- 
dence they wanted for his condemnation by de- 
claring that he was the Son of God. 

Christ's freedom had but one law, ''the will 
of his Father in heaven." All things were in 
absolute subjection to this — the sublime Apoca- 
lypse of the independence of God. Not a com- 
placent and self-contained repose is the lesson 
Christ teaches us of God, but that God delights 
in work. Christ's was the busiest life on record. 
Yet what we have is only a sketch. The full his- 
tory of that life would justify St. John's hyper- 
bole: "And there are also many other things 
which Jesus did, the which, if they should be 
written every one, I suppose that even the world 
itself could not contain the books that should be 
written." The life of God — how long? "Jesus 
Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." 
"From everlasting to everlasting thou art God." 
"Unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is 



Existence and Character 23 

for ever and ever." Eternity is the lifetime of 
Christ; the Hfetime of Christ is the Apocalypse 
of eternity. 

Could the Almighty Jehovah ever become the 
gentle and sympathizing friend of man? Christ 
answers that as he takes up the little children in 
his arms, puts his hands upon them, and blesses 
them ; as he treats woman with the greatest defer- 
ence, respect, and tenderness; as he sits at the 
table and eats with publicans and sinners; as he 
weeps over the bereaved and sorrowing; as he 
permits and invites the nearest approach of the 
fallen, the unclean, the diseased, the helpless, that 
he may chase away all their maladies and supply 
all their need; as he takes to his closest com- 
panionship the fishermen of Galilee, and links him- 
self in his sublimest work with men and women 
representing the humblest walks of life, — He thus 
opens to us an inside view of God's heart as it 
beats in friendship for man. 

God is love. Christ is the supreme Apoca- 
lypse of this. God's love is written everywhere, 
if we could only read it. It resounds through- 
out all his works, if we could only hear it. Its 



24 Christ the Apocalypse 

warmth breathes throughout the universe, if we 
could only feel it. But Christ's sacrifice is some- 
thing we can read and hear and feel. It is love 
in its most impressive form — sacrifice and suffer- 
ing for our sakes. Christ is God's love person- 
ified, concentrated, enthroned, and focused on the 
human heart, burning its way into the depths of 
the soul, and Hghting us up with the most vivid 
conceptions of this supreme attribute of God. 



CHAPTER III 
CREATION 

A X rHAT is the Origin of all things? Christ 
^ ^ ought to know; "for by him were all 
things created that are in heaven and that are in 
earth, visible and invisible, whether they be 
thrones or dominions or principalities or powers : 
all things were created by him and for him." If 
the Creator of all things does not know whether 
matter is eternal or originated itself, then who 
does know ? And if he knew that matter in some 
form or other was from all eternity or sprang 
into existence of its own accord, then truth can 
not be one of the attributes of the Creator. Either 
matter never did or could originate itself, but 
came into existence purely by the volition of God, 
or Jesus Christ has lied. If it is impossible for 
the Son of God to lie, then the first chapter of 
Genesis is true. There could be no greater false- 
hood and fraud than to allow that chapter to pass 

25 



26 Christ the Apocalypse 

unchallenged if it were not true. Christ never 
challenged the truth of that chapter, but con- 
firmed its truth by declaring that he himself is 
that Creator, the record of whose work it is. 
Christ himself is the Apocalypse of that chapter. 
What he has said and done, and what he did not 
say and do, is its best, its only exposition. 

If evolution means that matter, or mind 
either, has a self -inherent and absolutely inde- 
pendent power of production and construction and 
development, or any other power except what has 
been conferred by the Creator and exercised un- 
der his control, then evolution may be true if 
Christ is not God at all, but a base and powerless 
impostor. But if it be true that he is the Maker 
of all things and by him all things consist, then 
both matter and mind are not his masters, but his 
servants. If evolution means that development 
by degrees has marked the construction and or- 
ganization of the universe, however occult and 
prolonged these processes may have been, then 
evolution is a fact of which Christ himself is the 
most illustrious exponent. So far as Christ has 
revealed himself, this is everywhere his law. It 



Creation 27 

is his natural law working in his spiritual king- 
dom. It is his spiritual law working in his king- 
dom of nature. 

Christ's spiritual kingdom has been a series 
of slow developments — an evolution of a great 
primitive essential fact, *'that the seed of the 
woman should bruise the serpent's head." Ages 
and ages may yet be needed to evolve fully all 
that this intends. Primitive matter has been run- 
ning the same course. From the "chaos" of Gen- 
esis to the "new heavens and the new earth" of 
Revelation, vast cycles of time may be included. 
We stand midway between the two. Christ re- 
veals this much. And if men, by the scientific 
study of the Word and works of God, can pene- 
trate further into the mysteries of the mighty 
past, or the still mightier future, by all means let 
them do it. Christ has revealed nothing that men 
are quite competent to discover by themselves. 

His positive command is "Search" — that is, 
explore — "the Scriptures," and means search, ex- 
plore, anywhere, everywhere that it can be really 
and legitimately done. 

New worlds may yet be discovered in God's 



28 Christ the Apocalypse 

Word and God's work by the patient industry 
of man. Christ will no more make these discov- 
eries for men than he discovered America for Co- 
lumbus. But no new world will ever be discov- 
ered that will falsify his testimony or set his 
Word and works at variance with each other. 

Christ commands men to investigate. That is 
what he has endowed us with mental power for. 
We may — nay, we must — investigate the first 
chapter of Genesis and the last chapter of Revela- 
tion, and all between, as exhaustively as we can. 
We may — nay, Ave must — investigate the crea- 
tion — sink to its depths, rise to its heights, sweep 
its whole breadth, test to its last analysis, as far 
and as fast as we can. What is possible, learn; 
and what is impossible, be content to wait and let 
Christ take his own time to make all things plain. 

Why was there a creation at all ? Christ is the 
sublime Apocalypse of this. ''Thou art worthy, 
O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, 
for thou has created all things, and for thy pleas- 
ure they are and were created." It is God's pleas- 
ure to do nothing without an adequate end in 
view. His works and his purposes always run 



Creation 29 

parallel. The salvation of a lost race was the 
aim of Jesus Christ. No other aim would have 
been adequate to his stupendous task. The moral 
sublimity of that work sheds light on the whole 
creative work of God. The light of the Cross is 
quite sufficient to illuminate the universe. The 
supreme motive in redemption is love, and that 
discovers God's supreme motive in all his works — 
love. God made all things because he loved them, 
and he loves all things because he made them. 
From God's love sprang the creation of man and 
of man's home, this world, and of all worlds. Re- 
demption's aim is to lift man to the highest alti- 
tude of perfection, bliss, and usefulness. Re- 
demption has the power and adaptation to do the 
same thing for the whole created universe. 

Can there be no more creation? Christ sup- 
plies all the answer we can have or need. In him 
we see the limitless power of God swayed by the 
limitless love of God. Whatever Divine love may 
suggest, Divine power can do. If more worlds 
are being required now, God is making them. If 
more will yet be needed, more will yet be made. 
If a new heaven and a new earth will be neces- 



30 Christ the Apocalypse 

sary — and they will be — there shall be a new 
heaven and a new earth. If suns or systems need 
reconstructing and refurnishing, and if Christ 
meant that when he said, ^'I go to prepare a place 
for you," then Christ is reconstructing and refur- 
nishing suns and systems for the reception of his 
saints. 



CHAPTER V 

MAM 

^X THO and what is man? Christ himself is 
^ ^ the only complete answer. The Apoca- 
lypse of Adam the innocent and Adam the re- 
stored are equally found in Christ. Christ is 
the image of God in the Edenic man, and the 
image of God in the restored and glorified man. 
Neither paradisaic glory nor heavenly glory is 
explicable without him. If we want to know 
what Adam was before he fell, we must study 
the Man Jesus Christ. If we want to know what 
Adam's race is to be in full restoration, we must 
study the Man Jesus Christ. 

The Divinity of Christ is as certain as his hu- 
manity, and his humanity is as certain as his 
Divinity. Christ was a real man. He was like 
us in all things, our sin only excepted. He loved 
to call himself "the Son of man." Christ was the 
"express image of God's person." His body re- 

31 



32 Christ the Apocalypse 

fleeted that image. Jesus was neither ugly, nor 
deformed, nor imperfect. Had he been so, he 
could not have been the antitype of the perfect 
Jewish sacrifice. He was without spot before 
God, physically as well as every other way. That 
is, his body was physical perfection. That meant 
perfection of stature, and form, and proportion, 
and beauty, and health, and vigor, and all other 
physical elements of manhood. 

If Christ's body was ''more marred than any 
man," it was not God w^ho marred it in making 
it, but the cruel tortures of his enemies. If "there 
was no beauty in him that we might desire him," 
is was because unbelief had blinded the eyes of 
men, both of body and soul. 

Christ was Divinely beautiful in person — the 
"chief est among ten thousand, the One altogether 
lovely;" so beautiful that the little children loved 
him; and the instinct of a child is no bad test 
of a lovable person. His personal magnetism, 
as well as his miracles, had much to do with draw- 
ing the multitudes after him. There was majesty 
in, his mien. His every look and motion and ges- 
ture bespoke the King. The human form Divine 
becomes in Christ no longer a poetic fiction, but a 



Man 33 

palpable fact. No other form of organized life or 
unorganized, nothing material, can compare for a 
moment with the consummate beauty of Christ's 
face and form; that is, of the human face and 
form. It is an embodiment of God's beauty and 
majesty as far as an earthly thing can be ennobled 
and transmuted into a Divine resemblance. 

Christ's body was the fitting temple of his 
soul. His human intellect was a spark from the 
Eternal Mind — a bright ray from the Sun' and 
Source of all intelligence. So was Adam's in the 
garden; so is the intellect of every man. Christ 
shows us the royal supremacy of human intelli- 
gence over all things earthly. His mastery over 
all physical forces, beings, and things, not only 
exhibited the energy of the Divine nature, but 
symbolized the indisputable supremacy of his hu- 
man intellect as well; that is, of all human intel- 
lect. His whole life is the brightest Apocalypse 
of that kingly dominion conferred on Adam and 
his race: "Subdue the earth, and have dominion 
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the 
air, and over every living thing that moveth upon 
the earth." 

Christ's mind was the exponent of nature. 
3 



34 Christ the Apocalypse 

His close familiarity with natural phenomena 
breaks out continually in all his utterances. His 
intellect was constantly probing the higher phi- 
losophy hidden in all natural phenomena — con- 
stantly linking the spiritual with the material, and 
eliciting from both the lessons of wisdom for all 
men and all time. That is the true sphere of all 
scientific study and an exercise of mind worthy 
of its nobility of nature as the image of God; 
namely, to get nearer to God through the study of 
his works. 

Christ's mind was the exponent of itself. 
*^Man, know thyself," is one of the sagest maxims 
that has descended from antiquity. Its most il- 
lustrious exponent is Jesus Christ. *'He needed 
not that any should testify of man, for he knew 
what was in man." His profound knowledge of 
his own mind is the sum and substance of all men- 
tal philosophy. This, too, is the lofty function of 
all human intellect. Adam in innocence shows 
himself an adept in this science. One hint is 
enough. "And Adam gave names to all cattle, 
and to the fowls of the air, and to every beast of 
the field; but for Adam was not found an help- 
meet for him." If he had found such an "help," 



Man 35 

he would have revealed the most dense ignorance 
of himself. It is only in Christ that the philos- 
ophy of mind in all the fullness of its comprehen- 
sion, symmetrical proportion, majestic grandeur, 
and immeasurable capacity has ever been devel- 
oped to its own consciousness, or ever can be. 

"I came down from heaven, not to do mine 
own will, but the will of him that sent me." That 
is Christ's philosophy of morals for himself, for 
all men, and forever. Nothing can be more 
simple, more complete, more sublime. The hu- 
man labors of Christ indicate the work of man 
from the first one in Eden to the last one who 
shall live on the earth. Physical, mental, and 
moral work kept all his powers employed for use- 
ful and adequate ends. There is little doubt that 
he was "Jesus the Carpenter" quite as much as 
"Jesus the Prophet." 

Jesus was a workingman, the exponent of 
what all true men are to be. We are here to pro- 
duce something, and if we produce nothing, what 
business have we here? Skill, and the wonderful 
tools to use it in the human hands, mean the 
creation of good — the translation of raw material 
into organized excellence. 



36 Christ the Apocalypse 

Adam's home was a garden. So was Christ's. 
He Hved among the flowers and trees, rivers and 
lakes, mountains and valleys, fauna and flora of 
Palestine. The scenery of nature in its ever-vary- 
ing moods was his companionship, his exhilara- 
tion, his sanitation, his work. That is the normal 
life of man. 

Jesus Christ was the exponent of human 
progress, possibility, and future greatness. All 
lives leading outward and upward and onward 
converge in him. His whole being, character, 
life, was unending progress in seminal form — a 
vast aggregation of greatness and goodness and 
glory in its incipient stages. That was the most 
distinguished characteristic of Adam in Paradise. 
But his prophecy and promise of a mighty human 
future was but a twinkling star of hope. Christ 
is the Sun of human glory to come, risen in bound- 
less effulgence to set no more. 



CHAPTER VI 

CHRIST IS THE APOCALYPSE OF PROVI- 
DENCE 

r^ HRIST is the Vision of God in actual per- 
^-^ sonal supervision of all things. All the ele- 
ments of that supervision are found in Christ's 
life. But the lessons of Providence in him are far 
more suggestive than anything else. They are, 
for the most part, object-lessons adapted to the 
narrow limits of time and earth, and the ex- 
tremely small capacity of the human understand- 
ing, but point emphatically to a sphere wide as 
infinity and long as eternity. 

"Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud 
voice, yielded up the ghost; and, behold, the veil 
of the temple was rent in twain from the top to 
the bottom, and the earth did quake, and the rocks 
rent and the graves were opened, and many bodies 
of the saints which slept arose and came out of 
their graves after his resurrection, and went into 

37 



38 Christ the Apocalypse 

the holy city, and appeared unto many." That is, 
Christ rules the internal forces of the earth and 
of all worlds, determines the times before ap- 
pointed, and sets the bounds of the habitation of 
all religious dispensations and of all other dis- 
pensations, and controls the destinies of the dead, 
both of body and soul. 

''From the sixth hour, there was darkness 
over all the earth until the ninth hour." That is, 
Christ governs the sun and all suns and all worlds. 
"Who is this, that even the winds and the sea 
obey him?" That is, Christ holds in the hollow 
of his hand the movements of storm and sea and 
all the external forces of nature. 

*'Go thou to the sea, and cast a hook, and 
take up the fish that first cometh up; and when 
thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a 
piece of money; that take, and give unto them 
for thee and me." That is, Christ keeps minutest 
charge of every fish of the sea, and of all animal 
life. 

"And when he saw a fig-tree in the way, he 
came to it and found nothing but leaves only, and 
said unto it. Let no fruit grow on thee hence- 
forward forever: and presently the fig-tree with- 



The Apocalypse of Providence 39 

ered away." That is, Christ controls the Ufe of 
every tree and of the whole vegetable kingdom. 

''Consider the lilies of the field. . . . 
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like 
one of these." That is, God loves to paint the 
flowers, and all forms of beauty are of his 
ordering. 

''Then he took the five loaves and the two 
fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed them 
and brake, and gave to his disciples, and set be- 
fore the multitude, and they did eat and were 
all filled." That is, God provides profusely for 
the wants of all his creatures. 

"When they were filled, he said unto his dis- 
ciples. Gather up the fragments, that nothing be 
lost." That is, God wastes nothing anywhere. 
In all his providential administration, everything 
is put to good account. Nothing is lost. 

"Even the very hairs of your head are all 
numbered." That is, God keeps a close watch- 
care over the least concerns of his children, as 
he does over the greatest concerns of the hier- 
archies of heaven. Nothing is neglected or es- 
capes his notice. 

"And he leaveth the ninety and nine in the 



40 Christ the Apocalypse 

wilderness, and goeth after the sheep that was 
lost, until he find it." That is, the law of com- 
pensation is in God's administration everywhere. 
In the very weakness and necessity of his creatures 
they find his greatest protection and care. 

"Jesus wept." That is, sympathy for the suf- 
fering of all his creatures marks his whole ad- 
ministration. 

"Nathanael saith unto him. Whence knowest 
thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, 
Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast 
under the fig-tree, I saw thee." That is, God 
shapes the lives of men and nations, and often by 
means of trifles which in his hand are mighty, 
while men's mighty things often are only trifles. 

"The devils besought him, saying, If thou cast 
us out, suffer us to go away unto the herd of 
swine. And he said unto them. Go." That is, 
God delimits Satanic influence, and compels all 
the forces of evil to minister somehow to his sov- 
ereign and beneficent purposes. 

"Jesus, beholding the rich young man, loved 
him and said unto him. One thing thou lackest. 
. . . Go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, 
and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure 



The Apocalypse of Providence 4 1 

in heaven; and come, take up the cross and fol- 
low me." That is, wealth is no positive proof of 
God's favor, but often a tremendous test of char- 
acter — a trial of moral stamina as severe as to 
squeeze a camel through a needle's eye. 

"Who did sin, this man or his parents, that 
he was born blind?"' "Neither," said Christ. 
There is a reason for everything if you only knew 
it. It was that "the works of God should be made 
manifest in him;" that is, that all afflictions are 
not direct punishments for sin, but part of God's 
work in educating the world. 

"But of that day and hour knoweth no man; 
no, not the angels in heaven, but my Father only." 
That is, there are secrets in God's wonderful 
management that he judges it is best to keep to 
himself. 

"I have chosen you twelve." Twelve disciples, 
each with a distinct individuality different from 
all the others, but entirely one in spirit and aim. 
The manifestation of the Spirit in each was given 
to profit withal. That is, Christ's Church is man- 
aged on the principle of tmity in diversity, and 
diversity in unity — God's law of government 
everywhere. 



42 Christ the Apocalypse 

"Render therefore to Caesar the things that 
are Caesar's, and to God the things that are 
God's." That is, God allows a very large liberty 
to men in the management of their own affairs, 
without lessening in the slightest degree either 
his own absolute sovereignty or man's accounta- 
bility. 

^'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." 
That is, that the pressure of human trials will 
never exceed what human nature can endure with 
the help of God, and will never be more severe 
than what is necessary for the purpose of educat- 
ing us for a blessed immortality. 

"Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow 
not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; 
yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye 
not much better than they?" That is, God gives 
life to no creature on earth but he makes pro- 
vision for its support. If God did not intend to 
take the best of care of a Christian, he would 
never make one. 

"What man of you who, if his son ask bread, 
will he give him a stone?" That is, God provides 
for his children exactly what they do need, as well 



The Apocalypse of Providence 43 

as all that they need. And so with every creature 
he has made. 

"And unto one he gave five talents ; and to an- 
other two; and to another one: to every man ac- 
cording to his several ability." That is, God has 
made no man or creature or thing in vain. But 
each he has endowed with faculties and powers 
for the accomplishment of a distinct mission of 
its own, and which each is required to fulfill, and 
for the accomplishment of which he always will 
provide the necessary opportunity. 

"Those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam 
fell and slew them, think ye that they were sin- 
ners above all men that dwelt at Jerusalem? I 
tell you, Nay; but except ye repent, ye shall all 
likewise perish." That is. Divine retribution for 
sin and solemn warning are often strong elements 
in God's providential dealings with men. 

"No man laid hands on him, because his hour 
was not yet come." That is, we are immortal till 
our work has had the chance to be done. So like- 
wise with every created being and thing in God's 
universe. 

"But your sorrow shall be turned into joy." 



44 Christ the Apocalypse 

That is, God will transmute all the base metal of 
grief into the pure gold of gladness for his faith- 
ful children, and make all things work together 
for their good. 

Christ's own life is one vast congregation of 
providences as varied and complex and compre- 
hensive in their character as they are instructive, 
triumphant, and glorious in their results, for all 
time and all eternity. 



SECTION II 

dPtace 



CHAPTER I 
SIN 

/^HRIST is the Apocalypse of sin. Through 
^-^ that revelation of sin we see what the sin- 
ner himself is. None but the most exalted kind 
of being could have sinned so as to have required 
the sacrifice of Christ for its expiation ; and none 
but one made in the very image of God can sin 
at all. Man is the only being on earth that 
ever could have sinned, because he is the only 
Godlike being on earth. It is this moral quality 
that imparts the most transcendent dignity and 
importance to human nature. It was Satan's ap- 
peal to this highest quality of man, and of which 
our first parents were fully conscious, which se- 
cured the entrance of his temptation and man's 
subsequent fall. 

"God doth know that in the day ye eat 
thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye 
shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." That 

47 



48 Christ the Apocalypse 

is, "you will rise in the scale of your present moral 
dignity to a much higher altitude; you will come 
much nearer God in the knowledge of right and 
wrong than you are now, and from which God is, 
for some reason, holding you back." It was the 
dignity of the sinner that made the sin so great, 
and the greatness of the sin casts an awful light 
on the greatness of the sinner. It is Christ who 
enhances human dignity and worth to almost 
boundless dimensions. To restore in him that 
lost image of God, he considered it well worth 
all his stupendous sacrifice. The whole earth, in 
his estimation, is not to be compared for a moment 
with the salvation of a single soul. ''What shall 
a man give in exchange for his soul ? What shall 
it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and 
lose his own soul?" 

Adam's transgression looks like a trivial 
thing. Much of sin has that aspect; all sin has 
more or less of it. The real character of sin is 
only revealed in Christ. Christ takes us down 
into the profoundest depths from which it springs 
— heart enmity, desperate hatred of God in- 
wrought into the innermost texture of the soul. 



Sin 49 

He carries us up to the presumptuous heights to 
which it would dare to go, even to tear Jehovah 
from his throne and annihilate the Almighty. He 
takes us over the limitless expanse, whither it con- 
tinually tends to corrupt and destroy the whole 
universe. He unmasks all its flattering decep- 
tions, and uncovers all its hideous and terrific 
horrors. He shows us its omnipotent power to 
increase, its utter impotence to diminish. He 
spreads out before us its dreadful fruits, each one 
the perfection of misery, pain, and woe. He lifts 
from hell its covering, and, in the lurid light of 
damnation, he shows us its final evolution, its 
necessary and only possible outcome. Sin never 
had the opportunity to show itself at full length 
until Christ came. Adam the fallen, and Cain 
the fratricide, were but faint auguries of what 
sin was going to do. 

Antediluvian Atheism, with its moral despera- 
tion ; Sodom, with its moral putrescence ; Canaan- 
itish corruption, with its unsufferable vileness, — 
were but the carnalities at work, feeding on them- 
selves; not so much sin in its malignant assaults 
on brightly-illumined virtue. Jewish lapses were 
4 



50 Christ the Apocalypse 

far greater crimes, because evil came into far 
sharper collision with well-defined and well- 
known righteousness. 

In Christ the battle between evil and good 
reaches its climax. The whole forces of evil are 
here drawn out, and the full power of sin is 
launched on righteousness personified in the Lord 
Jesus Christ. It took Divine Goodness himself 
to draw forth all the venom there is in the sting 
of sin. The essence of sin is to return evil for 
good; the quintessence of diabolism is to return 
the most ferocious evil for the greatest of all good. 
That was Christ's experience. Every element of 
goodness in Christ was met with a full-orbed 
malignity — robust and resolute as hell itself 
could make it. In crucifying Christ, sin gathered 
up the strength of four thousand years of growth, 
and in the presence of that spotless Lamb of God 
seemed to develop another four thousand years 
of virulence in a moment. Its one aim was the 
utter and irretrievable destruction of Christ and 
of the last remnants of good off the face of the 
earth forever. Every conceivable thing that sin 
could do for that end was done, and when it was 
supposed that the last victory was won, the last 



Sin 51 

struggles of righteousness were ended forever, 
and the last rays of hope had gone out in the dark- 
ness of an everlasting night, then sin jubilated 
with the grim joy of hell. 

Here is sin in its full-length portrait; sin in 
its innate, unchangeable, universal character; the 
same yesterday, to-day, and forever. Its con- 
flict with Christ is the most powerful revelation 
of its character except Christ's conflict with it, 
which is a far more vivid revelation still. Christ 
looked at sin with the eye of the omniscient and 
infallible Judge. He alone could weigh its turpi- 
tude, understand its disastrous effects, and appre- 
ciate its endless and remediless outcome. He knew 
all about the lofty glories of heaven from which 
it excluded, and the deep damnation of perdition 
to which it consigned the souls of men. He saw 
it all as God alone can see, and he felt for the 
sinner as God alone can feel. The magnitude of 
Christ's sacrifice runs parallel with his estimate 
of the magnitude of sin. The moral grandeur of 
his atonement matches the all but infinite power 
of evil that he overthrew. 



CHAPTER II 
REDEMPTION 

T^HERE is but one God and one Mediator be- 
■*- tween God and man, Christ Jesus. Christ 
is Redemption in its unity of plan for all ages. 
There is no other name under heaven or given 
among men whereby they can be saved but Jesus 
Christ. There never was ; there is not now ; there 
never can be. 

Adam restored — and we love to think that 
he was restored — was a Christian. Enoch's walk 
with God was the walk of Christian faith and 
love so intense, so vivid, that it carried him, not 
through, but over, the portals of death. It was 
with a Christian ear Noah listened to the warn- 
ing voice of God, and it was with a Christian eye 
he penetrated far beyond the gathering floods to 
a grander Ark of Safety in the coming Savior 
of men. Abraham saw Christ's day, and was 
glad. The mists of two thousand years could 

52 



Redemption 53 

not dim his eagle gaze as his strong faith cut its 
way to a sacrificial offering greater far than that 
of Isaac, and to a Divine gift to men greater far 
than his own on Mount Moriah's top. 

The secret of all the colossal moral grandeur 
of Moses is, that **he esteemed the reproach of 
Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, 
for he had respect unto the recompense of the re- 
ward." It was the vision of the coming Christ 
that fired the songs of the Jewish bard. It was 
with the devoutest touch that David struck his 
lyre as his rapt spirit beheld his ascending Lord. 
"Lift up your heads, O ye gates, even lift them 
up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory 
shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The 
Lord of hosts; he is the King of glory." 

The saintliest Jew was the one who grasped 
most of the deep spiritual meaning of the Mes- 
sianic promises, and who lived up to his best 
ideals of the coming Messiah. Judaism never was 
a religion distinct from Christianity. The re- 
ligion of the patriarchs was the dawn of the first 
streaks of Christian light. Judaism was the gray 
morn of Christian day. Christ is the Sun of 
righteousness, arisen with healing in his wings. 



54 Christ the Apocalypse 

There was first the blade, then the ear, then the 
full corn in the ear. There was the infancy, the 
youth, the maturity, but it is Christ from first 
to last, and everywhere. 

If Christ be the true God, then his religion 
must necessarily be the only true one. Everything 
else must necessarily be false. Whatever is not of 
Christ in the religions of the world is false. 
Whatever there is of him in them is true, and 
there is something of Christ, more or less, in most 
of them ; probably even in them all. It would be 
a bad religion indeed that had not some tinge of 
ethical truth in it ; that is, some stray ray of moral 
light from him who is the Truth itself. Whether 
it be only the very faintest tinge, or a very strong 
coloring of ethical truth, it is all the same: it is 
Christ; it came from him, somehow. There are 
no morals out of him. In all ethical and spiritual 
realms he is the blessed and only Potentate, the 
King of kings and Lord of lords. 

The absolute unity of the great Christian de- 
sign — redemption through Christ — which runs 
through every age and dispensation, is not more 
remarkable than the vast diversity of operation 



Redemption 55 

which marked its development. "When the full- 
ness of time was come, God sent forth his Son." 
That fullness took at least four thousand years to 
fill. God takes his own time. When he builds a 
tree to last a thousand years, it takes a century 
or two to grow. The insect of a day matures soon 
after it begins to exist. Redemption was to last 
for ages of time, and its effects forever, and its 
infancy ran through thousands of years. Be- 
cause it stretched over so long a period it was 
necessary it should — if we are to believe that God 
knew best. 

The progressive development of Christ's re- 
demption — or, rather, the gradual discovery of 
that wonderful scheme — is the sum and substance 
of the Old Testament. Christ is the explanation 
of each stage of that discovery, and what it was 
for. Christ is the Key to the whole. Christ un- 
locks the mysteries of the Old Testament; un- 
ravels its perplexities; harmonizes its seeming 
contradictions; verifies its doctrines; fulfills its 
predictions; fills in its outlines; completes its in- 
completeness; unifies, beautifies, and glorifies the 
whole. With Christ, the Old Testament has but 



56 Christ the Apocalypse 

a single eye, lustrous with the glory of the cross. 
Without him, its whole body is full of darkness; 
and how great that darkness! 

''The seed of the woman shall bruise the ser- 
pent's head." That was the gospel of the first 
two thousand years, and it was the whole gospel 
of Christ in seminal form. The whole New Tes- 
tament is nothing more than the full expansion 
of that evangelical truth. Men had time in those 
days to watch and ponder deeply for hundreds of 
years the workings of evil — that evil so simply 
born in Paradise. The concentrated thought of 
to-day, aided by the whole instruction of the past, 
enables men to think a whole century of thought 
in a little while. The antediluvian got time — 
and none too much — to learn; and two great 
Christian lessons he did learn : that sin is Satanic 
poison; that the promised remedy was sure. The 
text of Enoch's prophetic sermon — the substance 
of which Jude gives — was ''ungodliness," 
preached with such emphasis that its echoes 
reached even to apostolic times. Noah's preach- 
ing was the same. These men of God and others 
of their age grasped the one Hope let down from 



Redemption 57 

heaven, the ''Woman's Conquering Seed," and by 
it were lifted to the skies. 

The law was the Israelite's schoolmaster to 
bring him to Christ. Men needed more than an 
abstract knowledge of sin. The law of Moses 
brought it home to them in the concrete. The 
law defined sin in its distinct nature, and in all its 
specific forms. The ethics of Moses presented to 
men, for the first time, good and evil classified, 
organized, enumerated, and stamped with Divine 
valuation. By the law came the knowledge of 
sin, sharp in its outline, vivid to be seen and felt, 
far-reaching in its stretch, understood as to its 
true genius, ghostly and terrible in its conse- 
quences, fatal in its end. 

What the sinful generations of men had been 
doing for two thousand years was found to be 
not merely an erratic impulse in some wrong di- 
rections — to account for which they scarcely knew 
how — but a systematic and desperate breach of 
law, which constituted the very foundations of 
all right and wrong, the eternal verities essential 
in the nature of God himself. The exceeding sin- [ 
fulness of sin flashed upon the human conscience \ 



58 Christ the Apocalypse 

as the lurid lightning flashed from the top of 
burning Sinai, and the awful terrors of a broken 
law shook men's souls with fear as the deep thun- 
ders shook the quaking mount. By the terrors 
of that law men were persuaded that atonement 
for sin was the most urgent necessity of man. 

But was there not some central idea of that 
atonement to come which men could comprehend 
and which their faith could grasp? Yes, there 
was. That sore need of the soul was met in 
the institution of sacrifice. The dim notion of 
sacrifice — for it runs through all the preceding 
ages clear back to Abel — blossomed in Juda- 
ism into the greatest significance and perma- 
nence. Every bleeding victim taught the great 
essentials of Christ's vicarious sacrifice — inno- 
cence bearing away guilt by the holocaust of itself. 
All Judaism centered here. Everything in it is 
ordered in reference to this, as the entire temple 
was ordered in reference to its one great purpose 
— sacrificial worship. 

Christ is the only possible meaning of these 
sacrifices, and their only possible virtue. "It is 
not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats 
should take away sins." How could it? In itself 



Redemption 59 

it was nothing. As .a type of Christ it was every- 
thing to the Jew, as his powerful telescope, 
through which he saw the world's only atone- 
ment brought nigh to the saving of his soul. 
Christ was his passover, sacrificed for him, and 
therefore he kept the feast. He beheld by faith 
the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the 
world. It was the sprinkled blood of Christ that 
purged his conscience from dead works to serve 
the living God. Through all his splendid ritual 
the glory of Calvary shone — the veritable She- 
kinah of Divine illumination. 

Christ is the truth and beauty of all other 
Hebrew types and symbols. Did the manna fall 
from heaven as the daily bread of the Israelites? 
"I," says Christ, ^'am that Bread of Life which 
came down from heaven and giveth life to the 
world." Did the gushing waters rush from the 
smitten rock in the desert? "That rock was 
Christ." Was the serpent of brass raised on the 
pole that the bitten Israelite might look and live ? 
"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that 
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life." Did the majestic form of 



6o Christ the Apocalypse 

the high priest pass before the Jewish eye, ghtter- 
ing in jewels and gold? It was that the Israelite 
might consider the Apostle and High Priest of 
his profession, Christ Jesus. Was there deep 
spiritual significance in the high priest entering 
once a year into the Holy of Holies ? It was that 
the Jew might realize that he had a great High 
Priest who should pass into the heavens — Jesus 
the Son of God. 



m 



CHAPTER III 
OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY 

HTHE Old Testament history had the same end 

-*- in view. It was God's training-school for 

Christianity. The world had four thousand years 

of practical education before it could graduate 

into Christianity. Because it got it, it needed it 

all. That history is Divine philosophy teaching 

by example in the life of men and nations. 

Everything in that history tends to Christ as all 

streams seek the ocean. Whether we can always 

trace the course of these streams or not makes 

no difference; they all run the same way. 

Whether it was the great empires like Babylon 

or Assyria, the Medo-Persian or the Roman, or 

the smaller nations like Egypt or Syria, Edom or 

Canaan, each had its lesson to be taught or to 

teach. The result was that the world was ready 

when Christ came. The highway was cast up 

and the stones gathered out. The long and pain- 

6i 



62 Christ the Apocalypse 

ful education of the past, wrought out in the 
throes of suffering intense in degree as it was vast 
in diversity, had struck home some lessons never 
to be forgotten ; had awakened a hungry sense of 
need not to be allayed ; had tamed the fiercer pas- 
sions of human nature to a stronger sense of 
reason; had ordered through Providence a con- 
junction of national allotment and political 
balancing to fit the prime moment when the Son 
of God appeared among men. 

While all this is true of the secular history of 
the Old Testament, it is especially true of its 
sacred history, the history of the Israelites. The 
majestic chain of Jewish Scripture history began 
with the promise of the Messiah, and culminated 
with the Messiah come. The Israelite himself — 
God's man — was a living prophecy and promise 
of Jesus the God-man. The whole race had no 
other reason for its separate existence and special 
favors but as the progenitors and forerunners of 
the Messiah, the world's Redeemer. 

Christ was to come of Abraham's line; there- 
fore Abraham's line was to be a worthy line, 
through which he might come. The bright Jewel 
of Messianic promise needed a fitting casket for 



Old Testament History 63 

its keeping, and Judaism was set apart and 
adorned for the work. The glorious work of 
God's covenant for the world needed a temple 
where it might rest through the ages, and the 
Jewish nation was the temple of God built for 
the purpose. All the glory of Judaism is Chris- 
tian glory. Their most distinguished men were 
those who most brightly reflected the light thrown 
back from the cross. Their most illustrious na- 
tional events were those that most strikingly 
presaged the coming glory of Christ's kingdom. 



CHAPTER IV 
OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECY 

( /^HRIST is the Apocalypse of Old Testament 
^^-^ prophecy. The need for prophesying was 
that the coming Messiah seemed long of coming. 
Every age hoped that the Desire of nations would 
surely appear in their time. Many prophets and 
righteous men desired to see his glorious epiph- 
any, but they did not. And the oft-deferred 
V hope made the world's heart sick. 

The imminent danger of despair and of apos- 
tasy was averted by the timely appearance of the 
prophets. Through them God reaffirmed his 
promises, and renewed his pledges that Christ 
should surely come. "To him gave all the 
prophets witness, that through his name whoso- 
ever believeth in him shall receive remission of 
sins." Prophecy had only one mission — to fore- 
tell and forth tell Christ and his kingdom of 

64 



Old Testament Prophecy 65 

grace and salvation, to preach the coming Christ 
with all the warning, instruction, and hope which 
that supreme fact comprehended. There never 
was anything else for the prophets to do or that 
they could do. 

As God fills immensity, and as there is noth- 
ing without him, and beyond him, and apart from 
him, so the God-man, Christ, fills the Old Testa- 
ment, its whole orbit of truth, and its whole sys- 
tem of grace. - Nothing, absolutely nothing, in 
the Old Testament is permitted for a moment to 
divert men's gaze from Christ and life through 
him. 

The prophets were the Christian preachers of 
old. They expounded, admonished, entreated, 
warned, encouraged. Their teachings and their 
predictions intermingled and illustrated and en- 
forced each other. The compass of their utter- 
ances was as vast and varied in its reach as the 
unity of their aim was emphatic and unmistak- 
able. Like the modern preachers of Christ, they 
swept fearlessly through all regions of thought, 
all periods and dispensations of time; through all 
worlds, physical, mental, moral, spiritual — all 
5 



66 Christ the Apocalypse 

generations of men; through all motives, in- 
stincts, and sensibilities of the human soul; 
through all the realities of time and eternity. But 
as the modern preacher's message is all summed 
up in Christ, so was theirs. This link of gold, 
burnished with constant use, holds all their teach- 
ing together with a unity as complete and strong 
as it is bright and beautiful. 

Little wonder if it is not easy to understand 
fully much of their teaching; for it is clothed in 
such gorgeous habiliments of fancy, such superb 
creations of poetry, eloquence, and song, as 
stand in unapproached majesty in the literature 
of any age or land. Little wonder, either, that 
many of their messages are still wrapped in deep 
obscurity, because they stretched far into the dis- 
tance of time and the mighty developments of 
Christ's kingdom which are even now a long way 
off. Portions were full of strange and apparent 
contradictions, which the advent of Christ has 
made plain. 

"Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a 
Son, and shall call his name Immanuel." In 
Christ that became the holiest and sublimest of 



Old Testament Prophecy 67 

verities. "The angel answered, and said unto 
her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and 
the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee ; 
therefore also that holy thing which shall be born 
of thee shall be called the Son of God." Isaiah's 
Redeemer, despised and rejected of men, is 
Daniel's Son of man coming in the clouds of 
heaven with power and great glory. He had no 
beauty that we should desire him, yet is he the 
Desire of all nations. He was despised, and we 
esteemed him not, yet is he exalted and extolled 
and very high. Dying, he made his grave with 
the wicked and the rich in his death, yet is he the 
Everlasting Father, and of the increase of his 
government and peace there shall be no end. A 
child born, a son given, yet is his name the mighty 
God. 

It was only when prophecy crystallized into 
history that these mysteries began to vanish, and 
the exquisite harmonies of Christ's character 
stood out in grand relief. So will it be. The 
mysterious prophecies concerning Christ in the 
Old Testament, still unfulfilled, shall become the 
historic facts of the future; perhaps a very dis- 



68 Christ the Apocalypse 

tant future yet. Then will men see Christ as 
they can not now, just as we see Christ as the 
patriarchs and prophets could not and did not see 
him in their days. But whether it be prophecy 
of the dim and distant past or of the dim and dis- 
tant future, Christ, our Christ alone, is the Apoca- 
lypse of it all. 



CHAPTER V 
SACRIFICES 

/^^HRIST once in the end of the world hath ap- 
^-^ peared to put away sin by the sacrifice of 
himself. All the essential elements in Christ's 
sacrifice must have been foreshadowed in the 
Jewish sacrifice, else they could not have put 
away sin. They atoned for sin because they typi- 
fied all that was vital in Christ's atonement. 

The light of the cross shone back over Juda- 
ism, but it reflected back on the cross. The Jew 
vv^as not redeemed with money, but with blood. 
"We are not redeemed with corruptible things, 
as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of 
Christ." In both it was a living creature slain, 
and in both a living human creature; in Judaism, 
by proxy; Christ, in Person. These sacrificial 
annuals were those God accepted, in place of men, 
and as the most fitting types of the Man Christ 
Jesus. These beasts were as free from all defects 

69 



70 Christ the Apocalypse 

as beasts could be. Not the roaring lion, the 
treacherous tiger, the grovehng swine, the stupid 
sloth, nor the cunning fox, nor even the fiery 
horse, was chosen, but the gentle lamb, the patient 
ox, the cooing turtle-dove. 

In Jesus Christ we have the noblest creature 
God ever made — man — and the noblest man he 
ever made. Christ was as perfectly man as he 
was perfectly God. He is therefore as amenable 
to all right human standards of judgment as any 
other man. He was one of us in everything ex- 
cept our sin. If wisdom consists in knowing how 
to apply the noblest principles to the noblest ends, 
then Christ was the wisest of all wise men. If 
intellect is to be measured by the depth of its 
penetration, the keenness of its analysis, the 
breadth of its sweep, the originality of its genius, 
then Christ's was an intellect of the most colossal 
sort. If common sense is justly regarded as one 
of the most valuable of all mental endowments, 
never had a human being a larger share of it than 
Jesus of Nazareth. 

If the due relation of each mental faculty with 
all the rest is indispensable in a w^ell-balanced 
mind, there never was a better balanced mind than 



Sacrifices 7 1 

that of Jesus Christ. Christ's heart was as great 
as his head. His power to love was as extensive 
as the whole range of truly lovable things. His 
power to sympathize was as extensive as all things 
that needed sympathy. His gentleness was equal 
to his fearlessness. His appreciation of all things 
noble was as enthusiastic as his hatred of all 
things mean and unworthy was intense. 

If simplicity, sincerity, self-control, straight- 
forwardness, translucent honesty of purpose, the 
rendering of due respect to all men — that inde- 
finable thing we call tact, and that other inde- 
finable thing we call gentlemanliness — are among 
the finest qualities of a noble character, then no 
nobler character ever appeared among men than 
Jesus Christ. If industry, self-reliance, inde- 
pendence of spirit, economy of time, and of all 
other resources, are invaluable practical qualities 
in any man, their most signal exhibition is cer- 
tainly in the Man Jesus Christ. If wise conserva- 
tism of all things good and true, and the most 
fearless progressiveness in all things legitimate 
and useful, are essential in the highest order of 
human character, then Christ's was the highest 
of all high human characters in all these respects. 



jz Christ the Apocalypse 

As no man has ever reached the loftiest plane of 
greatness without moral principles and moral 
character, neither did Jesus. He was, above all 
things, a good man. He was not so good as to 
be beyond the reach of temptation, "for he was 
tempted in all points like as we are;" but he was 
without sin ; that is, he was the best man morally 
who ever lived. 

A blemish on a Jewish sacrificial animal 
spoiled it for sacrifice. It could not be lame, or 
blind, or withered, or sick, or old, or deficient, 
and be a fit offering to God. Christ was a per- 
fect Man. There was no dimness in his eye, dull- 
ness in his ear, halting in his gait. He was not 
weak, nor sick, nor diseased. He had no physical 
deficiency or redundancy. He had nothing 
monstrous or abnormal or phenomenal about him. 
He had neither bodily nor mental nor moral 
idiosyncrasies, or peculiarities, or oddities. He 
was not a youth with his callow immaturity, nor 
an old man with his senile decay. He was in the 
flush of manhood at the moment when the clock 
of time strikes the noon hour of life. 

The Jew needed to offer a clean sacrifice. 
Anything else was an abomination. No wallow- 



Sacrifices 73 

ing swine nor half-clean beast could approach the 
altar of sacrifice. It was the cleanest and sweet- 
est of animals earth could afford, and brought in 
the cleanest and sweetest condition, and presented 
in the cleanest and sweetest manner, that was de- 
manded. Hence the brazen sea, with its profuse 
lavatories, the ascending incense absorbing all 
strong odors in its aromatic clouds, the punctil- 
ious removal of all the residuum of the sacrifice. 
It was spotless purity everywhere. 

The Man Jesus Christ had neither spot nor 
wrinkle, nor any such thing. He was holy, harm- 
less, undefiled, separate from sinners. The 
scrutiny of as sharp a race as ever lived, the 
Jewish doctors of the law, could find no moral 
flaw in him. Nineteen centuries of minutest in- 
vestigation has found none either. Nineteen hun- 
dred or nineteen thousand more will never find 
any. All heaven acknowledges that he is holy 
and the Omniscient Jehovah, who can not look 
upon sin, proclaims that this is his beloved Son, 
in whom he is well pleased. 

The Jews' was a free-will offering. That was 
the case in the sacrificial animals as far as it could 
be secured in a dumb beast. The Jew brought his 



74 Christ the Apocalypse 

offering of his own accord, and the animal came 
quietly with him. The sacrificial ground was not 
the arena of some Spanish bull-fight or bloody 
encounter between enraged and roaring animals 
and loud-voiced and desperate priests. The dying 
moan, the flowing blood, the awful stillness, the 
consuming flame, the prostrate multitude, the 
votive worship, the conscious presence of God, 
made up a scene of solemn and awful majesty 
as impressive as it was sublime. 

Christ offered himself without spot unto God. 
*'He did not strive, nor cry, nor did any man hear 
his voice in the streets." "He was brought as a 
lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his 
shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth." 
Christ knew what was before him. He had 
counted the cost. Nothing could turn him from 
his inflexible resolve. He saw the towering floods 
of persecution and malice and death rolling tu- 
multuously towards him, but he never quailed for 
a moment. He could weep over his dead friend 
Lazarus and over doomed Jerusalem, but not a 
tear for himself. He could lavish his pity on the 
poor and the anguished and the downtrodden, but 
wanted none for his own sorrows. He could 



Sacrifices 75 

flame into holy indignation at the hypocrite who 
took him to task for loosing on the Sabbath a 
daughter of Abraham, chained to her affliction 
for eighteen years, while he loosed his own ass 
every Sabbath to water, but never a murmur while 
he himself was being bound to the tree. He 
could scourge out of the temple the whole crowd 
of mercenary wretches who were infesting it, but 
he had no whips for those whose cruel thongs 
cut their bloody furrows into his own flesh. He 
could clothe with shame and contempt the miser- 
able deceivers who set their traps to catch him 
in his talk, but no overwhelming for those who 
clothed him in mock royalty, bowed the knee, and 
said, "Hail, King of the Jews !" He could smite 
until they were speechless his conceited and 
vicious questioners, but had nothing to say when 
vile soldiers smote his cheeks and spat in his face. 
He could resist mightily while Pharisees tried to 
tie his hands as he opened wide the doors of 
truth and light and mercy to a dark, lost world, 
but willingly held out those same hands for the 
hammer and the spikes that nailed him to the 
cross. 

Christ's was a whole-burnt sacrifice. He 



76 Christ the Apocalypse 

withheld nothing from the sacrificial altar. Jesus 
had all the instincts, capacities for enjoyment, 
lawful ambitions, and intense love of life of hu- 
man nature. No pedestrian climbed the hills of 
Palestine with more vigor and joy. No botanist 
scanned the beautiful flora of his native land with 
more appreciative eye. No astronomer viewed 
the heavens with more delighted discrimination. 
None ate a good dinner with more relish ; so much 
so that the slanderous said, ''Behold a man glut- 
tonous and a wine-bibber!" Never was there a 
better son, brother, neighbor, friend. No man 
had better health, took better care of it, or took 
more enjoyment out of it. Mental exercise was 
as delightful to him as physical. His intellect 
early took joyful wing. Even at twelve he was 
so happy in measuring intellectual strength with 
the old gray-beards in the temple that he forgot 
all about everything else. 

He w^as no sour recluse. He loved human so- 
ciety, and so strong and magnetic was that love 
that multitudes instinctively pressed close around 
him and never stopped to ask if they were wel- 
come. If he did not smile on the boisterous 
youngsters who clambered up over him, and if 



Sacrifices yy 

there was not a merry twinkle in his eye as he 
watched the racing hogs shooting into the lake, 
it was not because there was no sense of humor 
in his nature. 

He had no stoical indifference to popular es- 
teem. He was quite willing to be well and widely 
known and loved by his fellow-men. He had 
not the least objection to ride in triumph into 
Jerusalem ; to listen to the hearty cheers of thou- 
sands, and to hear the little children sing his 
praises in the temple. 

Life was as sweet to him as to any man who 
ever lived. But infinitely sweeter was it to him 
to lay it all down for a lost world. Christ knew 
well, however, that this was the least part of his 
sacrifice. To a good man there are things dearer 
than life. Love of freedom to many a patriot 
has been dearer than life. Truth itself numbers 
its martyrs by thousands. Many a man has died 
rather than do a mean act. "For a good man" — 
such as these — "some have even dared to die." 
For all these, and similar noble motives, Jesus 
Christ was as real and as willing a martyr as any 
who ever died. 

But a man's sacrifice must be measured by 



yS Christ the Apocalypse 

what he has to give. It might be something for 
a multi-millionaire to give his last cent to philan- 
thropy; for a powerful monarch to surrender the 
last shred of his authority for the good of his 
subjects; for a great genius to efface himself for 
the good of mankind. No millionaire, no mon- 
arch, no genius ever had a hundredth part to give 
away that Christ had. That was true, his enemies 
themselves being judges. 

If Christ's greatness and power over men is 
to be measured by the frantic efforts of men and 
devils to destroy it, then he was the mightiest 
Man who ever lived. Many a great man who has 
been shorn of his influence has died of a broken 
heart. "Hosanna !" the multitudes cried one day, 
as they lifted him to the crest of fame. The next 
they shouted, ''Crucify him!" as they trampled 
him in the dust. Christ felt more deeply than 
any of them the righteous fitness of the one act, 
and the dreadful iniquity of the other. 

To a lofty soul there are agonies of spirit far 
more terrible than any bodily pain. Christ's foes 
were of his own household. It was the Jew who 
rejected him, and the priestly Jew who made the 
loudest profession of knowledge and piety, and 



Sacrifices 79 

the Pharisaic Jew whose profession was the loud- 
est of all. 

All the privations of Christ's life were as noth- 
ing to that one mean stab, '*He casteth out devils 
by Beelzebub, the prince of devils." The thongs 
with which his flesh was lacerated were as nothing 
to the scorpions with which his soul was stung 
as men branded him as a liar, a blasphemer, an 
impostor. The crown of thorns was but slight 
torture to the crown of shame and contempt and 
scorn which men placed upon his head. The 
agony of his pierced hands was almost forgotten 
as he thought of the diabolical return men were 
making for the innumerable ministries those hands 
had wrought, the innumerable errands of mercy 
on which those feet had walked. Even all the 
hostility of the Sanhedrin started no perspiration 
on his brow, but the treachery of Judas made the 
bloody sweat exude in great drops falling down 
to the ground. It was not shrinking from bodily 
pain, but from the almost unendurable agony of 
his spirit in view of this treatment of his own dis- 
ciple, to be followed by a felon's death, which 
extorted from him the bitter cry, "If it be pos- 
sible, let this cup pass from me." 

Christ's was indeed a whole burnt offering. 



8o Christ the Apocalypse 

But these things do not sum up the total of that 
sacrifice. They only begin the reckoning. Jesus 
Christ was more than the greatest man who ever 
lived. He was man and God in one. He was 
God manifest in the flesh. The indwelling God 
gave his humanity a dignity and value which no 
other human being ever had or could have. As 
his Divine side was infinite, so his sacrifice par- 
took of the infinity of that side. All his suffer- 
ings were crowned with the dignity and great- 
ness and worth of a Divine Being. 

It is here where human valuations are quickly 
lost and where human reason or imagination fal- 
ters on its pinions. We may know something of 
Christ's sacrifice as a man. We can know little 
of his sacrifice as a Divine Man. What we know 
is that that sacrifice atoned for the sins of the 
world; that its meritorious riches are boundless, 
reaching everywhere, back to the first man, on 
to the last; up to the highest heaven, to which it 
elevates, down to the lowest hell, from which it 
delivers; throughout the whole man, for whose 
completest renewal it avails ; throughout the whole 
nature of God, whose every attribute it satisfies, 
honors, glorifies ; and throughout eternity for ever 
and ever. 



CHAPTER VI 

CHRIST IS THE APOCALYPSE OF THE 
HOLY SPIRIT 

73 EDEMPTION is not the destruction of hu- 
-■-^ man nature, except the bar to its return to 
righteousness. It neither replaced nor displaced 
any human faculty or power or obligation. It 
left man as he was before, with a straight and 
possible path back to a reconciled God ; to a com- 
plete spiritual renovation; to a rectified use of 
all his faculties ; to a blessed immortality. 

But how shall man, unaided, rise to the at- 
tainment of all these wonderful spiritual achieve- 
ments? He can not. He can no more lift him- 
self into spiritual purity and dignity as a saint 
than he could lift himself from his criminal doom 
as a sinner. Christ shows us that the Holy Spirit 
helps all our infirmities in these regards. Ere he 
ascended to heaven he said: "I will pray the 

Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, 
6 8i 



82 Christ the Apocalypse 

that he may abide with you forever." And he 
did. Were his disciples afflicted with dull under- 
standings and short memories? *'He shall teach 
you all things, and bring all things to your re- 
membrance whatsoever I have said unto you." 
Would spiritual inertia clog the powers of the 
soul, and the frigid environments of earth para- 
lyze the upward aspirations? "He shall baptize 
you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." Would 
impurity cling with obstinacy to the inner cham- 
bers of the soul? ''He shall sit as a refiner and 
purifier of silver." Would the giant forces of 
sin — that trinity of evil, the world, the flesh, and 
the devil — combine to arrest all progress of the 
soul in its upward march to life? "Greater is 
he" — that blessed Spirit of God— "that is with 
you, than all that can be against you." Is the 
human conscience still callous in its apprehensions 
of the real enormity of sin and its awful results? 
" He shall convict the world of sin, and of right- 
eousness, and of judgment to come." Is there 
a connecting link required to bring together the 
virtue of the cross and the need of the soul? It 
is found in the gracious interposition of the Holy 
Spirit of God. 



Holy Spirit 83 

How shall we know that Christ has saved us ? 
"The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that 
we are the children of God." Is love the fulfill- 
ing of the law ? — is it the very * 'heaven of heaven" 
of our spiritual life? It is ''shed abroad in our 
hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us." How 
shall we keep up heart and hope amidst the ten 
thousand discouragements of the Christian life? 
The very name of the Holy Spirit is the Com- 
forter. Is there to be any Christian joy this side 
of heaven? The kingdom of God is righteous- 
ness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Can 
our Christian life be made one of great and varied 
utility? "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, 
peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 
meekness, temperance." Surely it is not in man 
to direct his steps? "The Spirit of truth will 
guide you into all truth." 

Neither the atoning death of Christ nor the 
renewing work of the Holy Spirit set aside the 
action of the human will. That remains intact 
as the unchangeable image of God in our nature, 
and as the supreme point on which our accounta- 
bility converges. Christ's whole life is one vast 
and varied recognition of the royal dignity and 



84 Christ the Apocalypse 

unspeakable worth of the human will. Christ did 
everything to persuade ; he did nothing to compel. 
It is the same with the Spirit of God. The lati- 
tude God allows to human choice is immense, but 
in this is the awful apocalypse of its immeasurable 
importance. 

The prime condition on which Christ's atone- 
ment avails is faith. Without that, even his 
death is powerless to save us. Unbelief quenches 
even the almighty energies of the Holy Spirit 
within us. 



CHAPTER VII 
FAITH 

CHRIST is the Apocalypse of faith. In him 
it reaches its highest altitude of difficulty, 
and, in consequence, its highest altitude of worth. 
The ease with which some things can be believed 
is as great as the virtue of believing them is small. 

The faith that saves is a most precious thing, 
because it means the achievement of the most 
tremendous victories. "Faith is the substance of 
things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." 
Faith is severely tested by things "not seen," and 
quite as much by the things that are seen, because 
they are so largely the revelation of things that 
are still unseen. 

Adam and Eve saw nothing of the promised 
seed that should bruise the serpent's head until 
Cain was born. Eve looked with joy on the man 
she had gotten from the Lord, but she looked with 
well-nigh despair as she saw that he had bruised, 

85 



86 Christ the Apocalypse 

not the serpent's head, but that of her beloved 
Abel. 

Noah's faith had to contend for one hundred 
and twenty years with the things ''not seen." 
No sign of a flood, nor even the apparent possi- 
bility of one. And he had just as heavy a strain 
on his faith when he felt the rocking of his un- 
wieldy ship as it moved out upon the turbulent 
waters, the sport of winds and waves. 

Abraham sojourned in Canaan until he was 
one hundred and seventy-five years old, and of 
all that land which God had promised to give 
him he never owned a foot except the burial-plot 
he bought from the children of Heth. He saw 
his ninety-ninth year, and his wife her ninetieth, 
and no child through whom the promise of his 
innumerable progeny might begin its fulfillment. 
"The things not seen" measured almost the whole 
horizon of his lifelong vision. But the things 
he did see tried his faith still more. As Isaac 
asked him on the way up the mount, ''My father, 
behold the fire and the wood, but where is the 
lamb for a burnt offering?" and as he replied, 
"My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a 
burnt offering," his faith had come out of its hot- 



Faith 87 

test of all crucibles of testing, and as gold purified 
in the fire. 

The faith of Moses triumphed over the visible 
glories of the Egyptian court, and over the in- 
visible and altogether unlikely future glories of 
the Israelite slaves, only to have a lifelong oppor- 
tunity of triumphing over the things that were 
seen ; the awful crisis at the Red Sea, the sustenta- 
tion of a nation in the most inhospitable desert 
in the world; the almost ceaseless rebellions of 
the most stiff-necked and exasperating peoples for 
forty years. 

The judges, like Samuel ; the kings, like David 
and Solomon and Hezekiah; the prophets, like 
Elijah and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Daniel, be- 
lieved mightily in God and in the world's coming 
Hope, though they lived all their lives wrapt in 
the darkness of "things unseen." What they did 
see was simply a heaving ocean of dismal evolu- 
tions, fatal lapses, victorious abominations, and 
a hopeless and helpless looking futurity. 

Even when Christ came, it was still as true as 
ever that "faith is the substance of things hoped 
for, the evidence of things not seen." Much of 
what man saw in Christ was as inexplicable as 



88 Christ the Apocalypse 

what they did not see. The Roman saw in Jesus 
a power far superior to anything his own race 
had ever worshiped — a mightier Caesar than had 
ever sat on Rome's imperial throne, but a Csesar 
who fled from kingship, not into it, whose might 
was used, not for conquest, but for self-sacrifice. 
Pilate's faith got so far as his political eye saw, 
and no further : "I find no fault in this Man." 

Herod saw in Jesus the Prince of Necro- 
mancers. His faith crowned him as the most 
marvelous Magician in the world, and it turned 
to scorn and contempt when Christ stood motion- 
less and silent instead of gratifying the royal 
wish by a sample exhibition for his special delecta- 
tion. The learned Jew saw in Jesus a man at 
whose miracles and speech he stood astonished, 
but a man who painfully confounded all his pre- 
conceived and fondly-cherished ideals of a Mes- 
sianic King. The simple Nazarene, unclothed 
with kingly splendors and ungirt for warlike ex- 
ploits that should lift the nation to a higher pin- 
nacle of earthly glory than David or Solomon had 
ever done, was too bitter a disappointment to 
endure. If their dazzling dreams of the Messiah 
wxre true, then Jesus was no Messiah for them. 



Faith 89 

If Jesus was the Messiah, then all their dreams 
were false. And so, "though he had done so 
many miracles before them, yet they believed not 
on Him." The multitudes eagerly followed 
Christ because the "blind received sight, the lame 
walked, the lepers were cleansed, the deaf heard, 
the dead were raised up." They sought him be- 
cause "they did eat of the loaves, and were filled." 
They saw in him the greatest of Physicians, the 
most generous of Philanthropists, and their faith 
in him had no trouble in going that far. But it 
took flight when that mighty Miracle-worker 
walked hungry to the fig-tree to find nothing but 
leaves, suffered himself to be worse off for a home 
than the foxes and the birds of the air; when he 
allowed himself, without resistance, to be insulted, 
abused, and murdered. 

The common people heard Jesus gladly. His 
speech had the freshness of nature, the familiarity 
of every-day life, the glow of human reality, the 
instinct of truth. But below the charming sim- 
plicity of his parables there lay deep meanings, 
which, when touched, men exclaimed, "This is a 
hard saying; who can hear it?" The faith of 
even the inner circle of Christ's disciples had still 



90 Christ the Apocalypse 

need to be the "evidence of things not seen." The 
mysterious statement, "My kingdom is not of this 
world," did not prevent even James and John 
from putting in a special claim that they might 
be the chief ministers of State in that kingdom. 

When Peter declared his belief that his Master 
was the Christ, the Son of the living God, it was 
not flesh and blood that had revealed that to him, 
but the Father in heaven. Yet that same Peter 
knew so little of Jesus that, immediately after, 
we hear him severely rebuked for his ignorant 
interference respecting Christ's coming suffer- 
ings: "Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou art 
an offense unto me." And that same Peter, too, 
after more than three years of closest intimacy 
with Jesus, so little understood his meaning when 
he said, "He that hath no sword, let him sell his 
garment and buy one," that he had one ready, 
and drew it with as much vigor as any Mussulman 
warrior in after time. 

The whole life of Christ, even to his bosom 
friends, was a mass of amazing mysteries — a con- 
gregation of opposites; of things strong and 
weak; of things marvelously high and marvel- 
ously humble; of things clear as sunshine, and 



Faith 91 

dark as midnight; of things simple as childhood, 
and profound beyond conception; of things tran- 
sient as a passing day, of things everlasting as 
God himself; of things that touched but an in- 
dividual, of things that affected every soul of 
man; of things that centered in a blade of grass, 
a sparrow, a hair of the head; of things whose 
centrifugal flight swept the universe. His tragic 
death was to them the greatest mystery of all. 
He had foretold it, even its chief features; but 
when it came, they all forsook him and fled. His 
death was theirs too — the death of all their hopes. 
Even the strongest believers in him could only 
cry out of the depths of their despair, "We trusted 
that it had been he who should have redeemed 
Israel." 

Is faith still "the substance of things hoped 
for, the evidence of things not seen?" Have not 
nineteen hundred years of ever-increasing knowl- 
edge of Christ cleared up all mystery concerning 
him now? No, indeed. The Jew is as unable 
as ever to see his great Messiah in Jesus of 
Nazareth. The chivalry of self-sacrifice is still 
a mystery quite irreconcilable to the world's 
notion of chivalry. Christ's passage up to exalta- 



92 Christ the Apocalypse 

tion by the descending steps of humility is still 
a confounding enigma to men. 

How men view the conquest of enemies by 
forgiving them is seen in the vast armies and 
navies of the most Christian nations of the world 
— armies and navies immeasurably greater and 
more terrible than ever before existed on earth. 
The cross of Christ crowns the spires of a hun- 
dred thousand churches, and millions that worship 
under it are all too ready to do violence to those 
who differ with them, so little do they know of 
what that cross really means. The gospel is still 
foolishness to the Greek. Men who would fain 
monopolize the culture, the learning, the science, 
the wisdom of the world — the modern Areop- 
agites on the Mars' Hill of their own lofty con- 
ceits — still look down in mockery at the simple 
preacher of Christ, and cry, "What will this bab- 
bler say?" Christ is still, to many doctors of the 
law, a painful mystery. They do not understand 
him, and therefore they strive to leave him noth- 
ing but his name, and of his truth nothing but 
its shell. The world by its wisdom knows not 
the Son of God — ^no more to-day than nineteen 



Faith 93 

hundred years ago, and it will not any more in 
nineteen hundred years to come. 

Faith in Christ is confronted with other and 
even greater difficulties than these. The citadel 
of the soul, after all, is not the head, but the heart. 
It is not opinions, but passions, that rule mankind. 
It is not intellectual preferences or prejudices, but 
the "lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and 
the pride of life" that are the preponderating 
forces in the world. Men have always known bet- 
ter than they have done, because appetite has al- 
ways been stronger than conviction. 

This accounts for the strange and terrible and 
almost continual lapses of God's ancient people. 
They were scarcely well out of Egypt when all 
God's goodness and promises were well-nigh for- 
gotten in the memory of the leeks and onions of 
Egypt, its flowing waters, abundant fish, its green 
pastures and teeming soil. The pure and beneficent 
law of Sinai gave place with astonishing celerity 
to the sensuous idolatry of Egypt, and the fickle 
multitude danced around the golden calf and 
shouted, "These be thy gods, O Israel, that 
brought thee out of Egypt," as if they had never 



94 Christ the Apocalypse 

heard of the spiritual worship of Jehovah. Even 
Solomon lived to be so overcome with the carnal 
idolatries of his heathen wives as to build idol- 
altars by that very temple which he had dedicated 
to God with the sublimest of prayers. Jeroboam 
and Ahab, Jehoram and Manasseh, were actually 
worse incarnations of heathenism than the vile 
Canaanites, whom Joshua was commanded to 
smite from the face of the earth. 

So intrusive and well-nigh irresistible are 
these carnalities that they have forced their way 
into the very holy of holies of Christianity itself. 
They have enthroned their idolatries under the 
very blaze of the Christian Shekinah, as witness 
the frightful corruptions of the Greek and Latin 
Churches. It was the flesh, and not the spirit, 
that rejected and crucified Christ. Reason had 
little or nothing to do with it. Passion, thwarted, 
infuriated, let loose, was almost the only cause. 

It is the same to-day. There is not an Arab 
who fires into a Negro village and enslaves its in- 
habitants but knows well enough that he is com- 
mitting a dreadful crime; but that is nothing when 
he can drive a profitable trade in slaves. There 
is not a rum-seller but is as well aware as any 



Faith 95 

temperance lecturer that it is ''distilled damna- 
tion" in which he is dealing; but he cares little 
for that while his coffers overflow with easily- 
gotten gain. The thief, the murderer, need no 
judge or jury to condemn them; conscience has 
done that long before their crimes were com- 
mitted, but its voice was lost in the loud demands 
of the covetous eye, the vengeful heart. 

Passion is master. Lust is the autocrat of the 
soul. Anything that challenges that dominion, 
anything that aims at its overthrow, will rouse 
that lust to a white heat of rage. It is here where 
faith meets its most deadly antagonism, where its 
fiercest battles are fought and its most decisive 
victories are won. The faith of Adam, Noah, 
Abraham, wrestled with all these tremendous lusts 
of the soul, and overthrew them all. Moses and 
all the faithful prophets and pious Jews did the 
same. It was impossible to reach salvation 
through the coming Savior in any other way. 

The advent of Christ in person was a new 
apocalypse of this same necessity, more emphatic 
than ever. The very beginnings of faith in him 
were the beginnings of a deadly struggle with all 
the carnalities of fallen human nature. To be- 



96 Christ the Apocalypse 

lieve in Christ meant victory over all the brood 
of vipers that dominate the carnal mind — unright- 
eousness, fornication, covetousness, maliciousness, 
envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, lascivious- 
ness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, wrath, strife, 
sedition, drunkenness, revelings. 

It was an easy thing to admire the beneficent 
miracles and the fascinating speech of Christ; it 
was a very different thing to breast the whole cur- 
rent of the seething passions of the soul that they 
might find salvation in his name. It was one 
thing to follow him for some personal advantages ; 
it was quite another thing to be crucified with 
him. Faith in Christ meant the crucifixion of the 
fiesh with the affections and lusts. The dominion 
of even a single lust proved fatal to the rich young 
man who seemed to have gained the ascendency 
over the rest. "Go," said Jesus, "sell all that thou 
hast, and give to the poor, and come and follow 
me. But he went away sorrowful, for he had 
great possessions." It is the same to-day. The 
inexorable law of entrance into Christ's kingdom 
is, "If any man will come after me, let him deny 
himself and take up his cross and follow me." 
Even this does not sum up all the difficulties 



Faith 97 

which beset the exercise of faith in Christ. There 
is a tempting devil to be taken into account. 

Christ is the Apocalypse of Satan and his 
work. Is there a tempting devil ? Certainly not, 
if Christ has deceived us; certainly yes, if Christ 
is true. Christ declared that he cast out devils 
from the souls of men ; that he talked with devils ; 
that they asked his permission, and he gave it, 
to enter the herd of swine; that he was himself 
tempted by the devil. If there be no devil, then 
Christ has lied; if it be impossible for the Son 
of God to lie, then there is a tempting devil. 

Christ's temptation in the wilderness is a 
revelation of Satan's masterpieces in the line of 
temptation. Here are revealed his supreme points 
of assault, and the most potent methods he em- 
ploys. Distrust, presumption, and self-worship — 
all under the pretense of faith in God and our 
own good — these are Satan's master temptations. 
On these lines the first man, Adam, fell ; on those 
same lines the Second Adam, the Lord Jesus 
Christ, stood victorious. Satan can not force men 
to sin, but he can do everything short of that. 
His great power lies in inducing men to believe 
that evil is good, and good evil. It was listening 
7 



98 Christ the Apocalypse 

to the temptations of Satan that enthroned evil 
so completely among the antediluvians that every 
imagination of their hearts was only evil con- 
tinually. So with the Sodomites, the Canaanites, 
the derelict Hebrew kings and people, and all 
the wicked generations of men down to Christ's 
time. It was the success of Satan's temptation 
that led men to crucify Christ. The learned min- 
isters and rulers of the Jewish Church thought 
they were doing God's service in executing this 
impostor, Jesus. They thought they were acting 
as philanthropists and saints in crushing out of 
existence this fatal Christian heresy. So do the 
Mohammedans think as they murder the "in- 
fidels;" so did the persecuting bigots think who 
lit the martyr-fires of Smithfield or kept the In- 
quisition tortures of Spain going. 

A vast proportion of the crimes of mankind 
have been perpetrated under the name of religion ; 
that is, at the instigation of the devil. Lies are 
the staple commodity of Satan. Alongside every 
truth he plants a lie, and a lie so like the truth 
as to pass readily for the truth. There is no 
counterfeit coin like Satan's. It has been the 
world's chief currency all along, and is to-day. 



Faith 99 

The Sadducean lie, that there was no spirit nor 
devil, circulates vigorously still as we hear men 
scoff at the notion of any devil at all, and relegate 
it without hesitation to its place as a myth of the 
Dark Ages. The coin of the Pharisaic lie, that 
Christ cast out devils by Beelzebub, is still in cur- 
rency, though cast in a less outrageous-looking 
mold, and stamped with a more cautious impress. 
Much of the good of the world is still at- 
tributed to selfishness, priestcraft, .and pride. 
Satan will never let the world believe that Christ 
and his religion are good if he can help it. He 
knows how to paint a Christian life in all sorts 
of false colors. He can make the most fatal sins 
appear the most innocent-looking things, and the 
most vital Christian graces appear quite burden- 
some and unnecessary follies. By the terror of 
the gospel law of life — terrors of his own conjur- 
ing — he persuades men to have nothing to do with 
it. According to him, religion is only slavery 
and misery, and the pleasures of sin are the only 
true freedom and elixir-joy of life. The whole 
region of doubt and unbelief is his paradise of 
operations. This is his favorite hunting-ground 
for souls, and here he takes his prey by thou- 

L.oFO. 



loo Christ the Apocalypse 

sands. No soul reaches Christ by faith until he 
has quenched the innumerable fiery darts of the 
evil one. 

It is no easy thing to believe in Christ to sal- 
vation. The difficulties of such a faith in Christ's 
time were Alpine. They are that still. They will 
be always that. This is one chief reason why 
faith is so precious in God's sight, and precious 
in its influence upon ourselves. How can any one 
ever believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? Can a 
man do this of himself ? Yes, as easily as he can 
raise himself from his tomb. But for the Holy 
Spirit's help, no human being ever could or would 
believe savingly on the Lord Jesus Christ. It is 
the Holy Spirit who sends the first ray of con- 
vincing light into the soul. It is the Holy Spirit 
who establishes and illuminates the court of con- 
science and presides over the inquiry that brings 
conviction and condemnation to the guilty spirit. 
It is the Holy Spirit who inclines the will to turn 
round and steer heavenward. It is the Holy 
Spirit who inbreathes the desire to pray which 
sends its first sigh towards God. It is the Holy 
Spirit who helps the soul to strip the thousand 
delusions of sin and Satan of their covering and 



Paith 101 

to see them as they are. It is the Holy Spirit who 
darts the first rays of hope into the despairing 
heart. It is the Holy Spirit who takes us by the 
hand and gently leads us through the innumerable 
mazes of perplexity and danger step by step to 
the cross. It is the Holy Spirit who prompts, en- 
courages, stimulates, empowers us to trust in the 
Son of God. The difficulties of faith are mighty ; 
but the power and resources of the Holy Spirit 
are almighty, and they are all within our reach 
as readily as a father's and mother's help is for 
their child. '*If ye, then, being evil, know how to 
give good gifts unto your children, how much 
more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy 
Spirit to them that ask him !" 

What is it to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ 
We had better ask Christ himself. Christ taught 
the world what faith in him is by object-lessons. 
He has shown us how it is done by showing us 
the thing itself being done. He presents us with 
souls believing, to show us how all souls may be- 
lieve. When he said to the Syrophenician 
woman, "O woman, great is thy faith ; be it done 
unto thee even as thou wilt," all the essential ele- 
ments of saving faith must have been present. 



^ 



I02 Christ the Apocalypse 

This woman's faith had ah-eady triumphed over 
all manner of hindrances, external and internal; 
hindrances such as were keeping multitudes of 
learned Jews and of the common people alike 
from Christ. She was sure Christ could grant 
her request; but was she sure he would? Her 
faith in Jesus had made it already sure. The 
miracle she sought was already as good as done. 
She might not have comprehended Paul's defini- 
tion of faith, but she was helping us wonderfully 
to comprehend it. Her faith was the substance 
of that miracle hoped for, the evidence of that 
blessed thing as yet unseen. She was not reason- 
ing about the nature of faith and how to exer- 
cise it. She was exercising it so mightily that 
even the thought of what it was did not occur 
to her. Her faith brought her knowledge; she 
knew he could. It brought her certainty; she 
was sure he would. It brought her rest ; her heart 
trusted without fear. 

This is faith in its core. It is heart-trust in 
Jesus, heart-trust in his infinite love and power. 
It is a heart-confidence so confiding, so rich, so 
full, as to obliterate even the thought of con- 
fidence; like the heart-beat of health, so vigorous 



Faith 103 

that we are unconscious of having a heart at all ; 
like the motions of life in its fullness, so buoyant 
and joyous we do not stop to ask how we live, or 
what is the philosophy of life. That this was her 
faith, and is to be ours, Christ took care to show 
us in a way we can never forget. He tested it 
before our eyes. He put it into the hottest of 
crucibles to show us its real purity and genuine 
worth. 

Her first appeal was apparently a failure. 
Christ did not respond, as she had fully expected. 
His answers were such as seemed to discourage, 
if not destroy, all hope. Any other sort of faith 
than hers would have turned away in despair, and 
in angry despair at that. But the more Christ 
appeared to hold back, the more strenuous and 
resolute her faith grew. No matter what he said 
or did, she would have the blessing. And she 
got it, and so will all whose faith, like hers, will 
take no denial. It is the faith that refuses to 
hesitate, to doubt, to fear, no matter how God 
appears to treat us, that God loves and honors and 
rewards. To such a faith he always says, "Be 
it unto thee as thou wilt." ^ 

Faith in Christ means surrender. The last 



I04 Christ the Apocalypse 

weapon of war with God is dropped ; the last for^ 
tress of hostihty is dismantled; the key of the 
kingdom within is handed over to Christ. Christ 
shows us how this is done in one illustrious ex- 
ample — Paul. Paul in unbelief was a whole 
arsenal of weapons, bristling with deadly hostility 
to Christ. All the powers of his body, of his stal- 
wart intellect, of his vast erudition, of his en- 
thusiastic heart, of his indomitable will, of his 
commanding influence, of his naturally fervid re- 
ligious spirit, were aroused to a white heat of 
hostility at the very name of Jesus of Nazareth. 
He was ready to shed the last drop of his blood 
and of other people's blood to blot that name from 
the memory of man. 

But Paul, the believer in Jesus, is the most 
complete reversal of all this. He changed mas- 
ters. His surrender to Christ was as complete, 
and even much more complete, than his former 
surrender to unbelieving hatred. Paul's faith 
made Christ supreme over the whole extent of his 
nature, character, life, work, destiny. Paul's sur- 
render was positive as well as negative. He gave 
up all opposition to Christ ; he devoted all he had 



Faith 105 

to devote to Christ. It was a willing, gladsome, 
jubilant act of his soul, in which all his faculties 
concurred and rejoiced to concur. It was done 
eagerly, unhesitatingly, unconditionally, royally, 
finally. That is the way to believe in the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and of all such Christ says with 
Divine emphasis, "Thou shalt be saved." 

Such a faith, as the condition of our ac- 
ceptance with God, reveals the supreme wisdom 
and righteousness and goodness of God. Ev^n 
to human comprehension it is grand in the ex- 
treme. It necessitates the profoundest abasement 
of self, the keenest appreciation of our personal 
need, the liveliest sense of the exceeding sinful- 
ness of sin. It is the voluntary homage of an in- 
tellectual and moral and accountable being. It is 
the free choice of the noblest and the best. It 
is the deep channel through which the largest 
gratitude of the soul can flow. It is the only fit- 
ting outlet for the loftiest admiration and love 
which the human heart can feel. It is, in itself, 
a moral and intellectual education, whose neces- 
sary effect on the soul is in the highest degree 
sublime. It is the noblest exercise of the noblest 



io6 Christ the Apocalypse 

powers of man, and its exercise is a benediction 
by far the greatest that any human act can confer 
on human nature. 

Moreover, it is within the reach of all, the 
little child, the hoary veteran, the simplest intel- 
lect, the most imperial mind, the most illiterate, 
the most erudite scholar, the rich, the poor, the 
forlorn, the solitary, the friendless. In all lands 
and climes and countries, in all seasons and times 
and periods and places, anywhere, everywhere, 
this grand, blessed act of the soul is possible to 
humanity, and equally acceptable to God. It may 
be the act of a moment, and it may bring the 
blessings of life and salvation in a moment. It 
is as honoring to God as it is ennobling to human 
nature. It is the most emphatic recognition we 
can make of God's sovereign authority, of his 
holiness, wisdom, power, and love, and of every 
attribute of his nature. It puts our most sig- 
nificant seal of approval on God's method of sav- 
ing the race. It appreciates Christ's wonderful 
sacrifice and infinite love immeasurably more than 
all other modes of appreciation, and it is infinitely 
more grateful to him than all others put together. 
It is the only tangible and substantial thing we 



Faith 107 

can offer Christ, and he accepts it as the richest 
of all gifts that the wealth of human nature can 
bestow. It crowns the Lord Jesus as Lord of 
all, the King of glory in the vast realm of hu- 
man thought and feeling and desire, and he ac- 
cepts with delight the royal dignity we confer 
and the loyal fealty we swear. It is the only 
honorable and proper and fitting thing we can 
do with Jesus Christ, and the whole universe is in 
complete accord with the righteousness of the 
act. It enables Christ to see of the travail of his 
soul, and he is satisfied. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
THE SOUL'S RENEWAL 

/'^HRIST is the Apocalypse of the soul's re- 
^^-^ newal in righteousness and true holiness. 
Christ was heaven-born; so must we be. Our 
new life begins where his began, by the direct in- 
spiration of the Holy Spirit. 

Without regeneration, no man can ever be a 
Christian. "Ye must be born again." It was 
news to Nicodemus when he heard this, and it 
was neither palatable nor possible-looking news 
to him. Nor has it ever been either the one or 
the other to the world in general. It is too radical, 
too sweeping, too immense for the natural man 
or the Pharisaic man to appreciate or feel the 
need or want thereof. It is far easier to put a 
little whitewash on the outer sepulcher than to 
make a clean sweep of all the dead men's bones 
inside. The world is always ready to commend 

the making clean of the outside of the cup and 
io8 



The SouFs Renewal 109 

platter, but does not want that the extortion and 
excess inside be touched. -n 

Christ was a revolutionist. Nothing but turn- I 
ing the whole inside pollution out would do for 
him. Nothing but the expulsion of the old car- 
nalities and induction of a whole new set of moral 
principles and powers would satisfy him. The 
old foundations were too rotten to build the new 
man on; they must be swept away, and if any 
man be in Christ, he is a new creature. 

This is Christ's starting-point for the new 
character and life. It is a new creation as much 
as the creation in the beginning. It is the creation 
of new desires, aims, and aspirations; new mo- 
tives, principles, and incentives ; new delights, ap- 
petites, and tastes ; new notions, ideas, and ideals ; 
new resolves, purposes, and plans ; new relations 
to God and man, to time and eternity. In fact, 
"old things have passed away ; all things have be- 
come new." "With open face he beholds, as in 
a glass, the glory of the Lord, and is changed 
into the same image from glory to glory, even as 
by the Spirit of the Lord." 

This is a wonderful revolution, the most won- 
derful in the world. Angels, who look at it from 



no Christ the Apocalypse 

a far loftier vantage-ground than ours, are struck 
with heavenly admiration as they watch its enact- 
ment. Whether their intense interest is awak- 
ened as armies struggle on the battlefield, or as 
diplomatists struggle in cabinets and councils, or 
as national or social or scientific revolutions pass 
before their eyes, we are not so distinctly in- 
formed; but Jesus himself declared that "there is 
joy in the presence of the angels of God over one 
sinner that repenteth." 

But can this most atonishing of all beneficent 
transformations be really effected? How? and 
where? and when? and under what conditions? 
It is as unattainable by mere human power, and 
all human power combined, as to "bind the sweet 
influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion, 
or bring forth Mazzaroth in his season, or guide 
Arcturus with his sons." But it^^!^ easily done 
as Omnipotence can make things easy. 

Christ answers the eager questionings of the 
soul regarding the stupendous work of God in 
his own way, and to us the way most vividly clear 
and intensely satisfying. He shows us what con- 
version is by converting men before our eyes. 

Pentecost is Christ's answer to all manner of 



The Soul's Renewal in 

inquiries concerning conversion. Here three 
thousand sinners passed through this mighty 
change. The work was done before the unclouded 
gaze of men, and of all men to the end of time. 
All ages, sexes, and conditions were represented. 
It was done quickly, thoroughly, lastingly. 
Prayer, and faith, and perseverance, and unity of 
desire, and whole-hearted earnestness were the 
human conditions fulfilled; the Holy Spirit of 
God did the rest. Sin was consumed as in a 
furnace of fire; purity was enthroned with royal 
magnificence; moral powxr invincible was im- 
parted; and each soul was sent forth on its mis- 
sion in life as a flaming seraph, full of the life 
and joy and beauty and might and glory of its 
heaven-bestowed nature. 

That was only a sample of how God converts 
men; how he intended to convert men; how he 
will always convert men. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE CHRIST-LIFE 

\ 1 7HAT is a Christian? It is one like Christ. 
^ ^ A Christian is a human edition of the 
Divine Christ; a reproduction of the infinite 
Christ in the finite human being, so far as it can 
be. He is our example that we should follow 
his steps. 

But can we really be Christians like Christ? 
Is that possible to mortals here below, and how 
far is it possible? Let Christ himself answer. 
He himself has taken great pains to inform us 
well on that point. His answer is in living men 
like ourselves, and especially the apostle Paul. 
Paul was not like Jesus, a divine man. He was 
like us, an entirely human man. What Paul was, 
we can be, and through the same means. 

What was Paul? He was a sinner, to begin 
with, and, by his own confession, the chief of 
sinners. If to be a murderer and a murderer of 



The Christ-Life 1 1 3 

God's saints is to be the chief of sinners, then 
Paul was right in his own estimate of himself. 
Paul's start heavenward was not from the top- 
most round of the ladder of human innocence 
and excellence. He was low enough when the 
message of salvation reached him. Christ speaks, 
through sinful, blaspheming, bloodthirsty Saul 
of Tarsus, to all vile sinners. Any man can be 
saved if Saul could. The guiltiest souls will be 
forgiven, if they but obey Christ's call as he did. 
And yet Paul did start from the very topmost 
round of the ladder of mere human excellence. 
He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. That meant 
the best sort of man that mere human power 
could make. Probably the best attempt ever 
made by man to make a first-class man was that 
of the Pharisee. And he succeeded in making 
a first-class 'Viper." Paul's whole religion had 
to be unmade before he could take the first step 
heavenward. We must come down from the lofty 
pedestal of our own self-created goodness, and 
humble ourselves before God. Paul did come 
down, and, by faith in the crucified Redeemer, 
he became a converted man through the power 
of the Holy Spirit. "For me to live is Christ,'' 



1 1 4 Christ the Apocalypse 

he said; that is, he had chosen the Christ-life to 
live. At its close, he declared, ''I have fought a 
good fight; I have finished my course; I have 
kept the faith." That was the Holy Spirit's 
declaration as well as his. 

War is the noblest thing in the world, if it 
is only of the right kind. Christ, the Captain 
of our salvation, was the greatest Warrior who 
ever lived. Paul was a soldier from the hour of 
his conversion. So is every true convert. So 
must every true convert be. There is a trinity 
of evil as of good — the devil, the world, and the 
flesh. All the battalions of evil are ranked under 
these great divisions. Paul fought them all. 
Christ fought Satan with the sword of the Spirit, 
the Word of God. That was Paul's weapon 
throughout. Christ subdued the world with love. 
So did Paul. Christ was full of the Holy Spirit. 
Paul was so full of the Spirit that he kept his 
body under. It was a temple of the Holy Ghost. 
Courage, endurance, discipline, skill, loyalty, are 
essentials in the soldier. Paul was a master in 
them all. Amid roaring multitudes of fiery and 
bloodthirsty fanatics, he, like his Master, re- 
mained calm and undismayed. He stood un- 



The Christ-Life 1 1 5 

abashed in the presence of kings and potentates, 
and poured out his eloquent logic in defense of 
Christianity. Pounded almost to death, he was 
up and away to preach. His masterly retreats 
were as bold as his lion-like assaults. He could 
fearlessly eye the skulking Festus, though his 
prison-chain clanked by his side, and he could 
manfully demand of the magistrates of Philippi 
when they dared to whip a Roman citizen. 

It was no wonder that the Roman officer on 
board the Castor and Pollux was so friendly to 
Paul. It was one courageous spirit recognizing 
another. Paul could storm the enemy's citadel, 
sword in hand, as when he scaled the ramparts 
of Corinth or Athens, Ephesus or Philippi, and 
he could execute a brilliant flank movement, as 
when he appealed to Caesar. A more fearless 
warrior never lived; that is, a man more like his 
Master, Jesus Christ. ''Of the Jews," he said, 
*'five times received I forty stripes save one. 
Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, 
thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day 
I have been in the deep ; in journeyings often, in 
perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by 
mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen. 



1 1 6 Christ the Apocalypse 

in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, 
in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren ; 
in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, 
in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold 
and nakedness." But none of these things moved 
him. Like his Master, he suffered everything 
and flinched in nothing. Firm as adamant, he 
stood to his post. Obedience to conscience, to 
the truth of God, was the lodestar from which 
he turned neither to the right nor left. He had 
conquered himself, and the word of command 
from the skies was enough for him. Grace had 
sharpened his intellect, rectified his judgment, 
and made him as wise in his moral strategy as 
he was fearless in the fight. Never did soldier 
make fewer mistakes or execute wiser plans of 
Christian campaign; that is to say, never was 
Christian warrior like the great Captain himself, 
the Lord Jesus Christ. Through all his wars 
one banner was waved aloft — the bloodstained 
banner of the Cross, ''This one thing I do !" 

Nor did he beat the air. No, but he beat the 
enemy! His was the march of conquest. Far 
more than Caesar could he say, ''I came, I saw, 
I conquered." In his track sprang up Churches, 



The Christ-Life 1 1 7 

converts, organized Christianity — and Chris- 
tianity to stay; and it has staid through all the 
ages since, and will to the end of time. "He 
finished his course." He was bound to win in 
the race, and win he did. He had no weights 
of worldliness and unbelief and half -hear tedness 
to lay aside. He had done that long ago. He 
ran as all Christians can and should, with a light, 
a sinewy step, a cheery, vigorous bound forward, 
and a heart full of hope of winning. Of de- 
spondency he knew nothing, and would know 
nothing, and neither should we. Over his heart 
he wore a coat of mail, a faith from which all 
the fiery darts of temptation and all the floods 
of trial rolled harmlessly ofif. Nothing hurt or 
weakened or impeded him in his glorious mis- 
sion. By the Divine alchemy of the heaven-sent 
promise, all things worked together for his good, 
and the good of the cause for which he labored. 
Instead of weakening in the race, he waxed 
stronger and bolder at every step, and never be- 
fore was he so triumphantly happy as within the 
sound of the executioner's ax. Like his glorious 
Lord, he neither tired nor stopped until he could 
exclaim, "It is finished!" And he "kept the 



1 1 8 Christ the Apocalypse 

faith," and had a faith to keep. He knew well 
whom he had believed. He had scanned the 
whole hemisphere of fable, Jewish and heathen, 
and he had done with it forever. The rubbish 
of tradition he had cleared away until he had 
reached the solid rock of truth, the truth as it 
was in Jesus, and he had built upward thereon 
his life of faith and labor of love. 

Paul's grip of faith and the reason why, he 
lays bare in his Epistle to the Romans. He shows 
us there how well he had mastered the deep. 
Divine philosophy of salvation's plan. That 
epistle opens to us the breadth of his Christian 
intellect and the warmth of his Christian heart. 
He had found something dearer than life, and 
he ever after counted all things but loss for the 
excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ. 
Neither the polished sophistries of Greece and 
Rome nor the fascinating splendors of Judaism 
could ever in the least loosen his grasp of the 
Christ truth, all summed up in a word, "Christ 
in him the hope of glory." That truth lodged 
in his heart as in a New Ark of the Testament, 
and over which the light of Christ's face, as a 
living Shekinah, ever beamed, untarnished and 



The Christ-Life 119 

undimmed through all his wanderings, toils, and 
trials. 

Can weak, sinful man ever be like Christ? 
Can he follow such a holy example? Can he 
walk as he also walked? Can Jesus Christ be 
indeed a possible pattern for only Christian char- 
acter and life? 

This is Christ's answer. He points us to 
Paul, and says, "By grace are ye saved through 
faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift 
of God." 



CHAPTER X 
CHRISTIAN DIVERSITY 

13 UT every Christian can not be a Paul. Cer- 
-■-^ tainly not. Christ never intended that he 
should be. There is not the least necessity that 
he ought to be. The spiritual elements of Paul's 
character are free to all men; his special mission 
as God's chosen servant belonged to him alone. 
This is true of all men as well as Paul. The 
manifestation of the SpTrit is given to every man 
to profit withal. Unity in diversity, and diversity 
in unity, is Christ's law in his spiritual kingdom, 
as it is his law everywhere else, so far as we 
know. 

No two things are alike — no two men, no 
two Christians. Christ had no two apostles alike, 
nor their mission either. Take four apostles — 
Peter, Paul, James, and John. Peter was im- 
pulsive, warm-hearted, erratic, and given to sud- 
den strokes. It seems as if the blood of the Celt 

120 



Christian Diversity 121 

flowed through his veins. A nature of that kind, 
no doubt, has its own special dangers. It was 
Peter who, in his sudden warmth of mistaken 
zeal, rebuked Christ for predicting his sufferings 
on the cross. It was impetuous Peter's sword 
that swung aloft and came down on the ear of 
the high priest's servant at Gethsemane. It was 
Peter's voice that was heard vowing to go to 
death rather than deny the Lord. And alas! it 
was that same voice that was heard in the council 
chamber of the Sanhedrin, swearing violently 
that he knew not the man Jesus. 

Yet such a nature has its good possibilities. 
It was Peter — prompt Peter — who, at the Mas- 
ter's call, dropped his fishing-tackle, left all, and 
followed him. It was Peter who made the first 
clear, outspoken confession of the glorious Mes- 
siahship of Christ : "Thou art the Christ, the Son 
of the living God!" It was Peter's warm heart 
that spoke on the Transfiguration Mount, "It is 
good to be here; let us make three tabernacles; 
let us stay here forever!" It was mighty Peter 
whose preaching on the Day of Pentecost, like 
a tornado of heavenly fire, swept three thousand 
souls into the kingdom of God. It was heroic 



122 Christ the Apocalypse 

Peter whose boldness astounded the self-wise 
doctors of the council as he drove home the sword 
of truth to its very hilt: ''Be it known to you 
all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the 
name of Jesus of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, 
whom God raised up from the dead, even by him, 
doth this man stand here before you whole. 
This is the stone which was set at nought of 
you builders, which is become the head of the 
corner. Neither is there salvation in any other 
name given among men whereby we must be 
saved." And it was Peter who, if tradition is 
true, refused to be crucified except with his head 
downward, that he might with his last act mark 
his abhorrence of his shameful denial of his Lord. 
Under the restraining and inspiring grace of 
God, Peter's peculiarity of nature fitted him for 
a work he alone could best do. As one of the 
inner circles of Christ's most intimate friends; 
as a mighty leader in the first Christian Church ; 
as the first to make a break in the terrible ram- 
parts of heathenism, and the first Christian 
preacher to the Gentile world, he stands, and was 
pre-eminently well fitted to stand, as a glorious 
apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. 



Christian Diversity 123 

The world has always owed much to its Peters 
— its impetuous, fearless, powerful, warm-hearted 
heroes, whom it has very often styled cranks and 
fools. Both in Church and State it is they who 
have often made glorious innovations and start- 
led the world out of its ruts by their sudden and 
tremendous strokes, which have turned out per- 
manent benedictions to the race. 

Then comes Paul, a totally different char- 
acter, — calm, thoughtful, reflecting, with a tower- 
ing intellect and a broad, many-sided nature; 
learned, cultured, full of knowledge and wisdom ; 
a man pre-eminently of the world, in the best 
sense, and of the higher world of letters, and 
philosophy, art, and government; a born prince 
among men. It took a mighty, moral heat to 
set him on fire ; but when he was on fire, he burned 
with a steady blaze of holy, intelligent, and un- 
quenchable enthusiasm. That was the man to 
write the profound Epistle to the Romans ; to de- 
fend and expound the Christian doctrine before 
the haughty scholars of Greece and Rome; to 
argue for Christianity before hostile audiences 
in the synagogues ; to stand in courts and palaces 
and royal presences and speak worthily and con- 



124 Christ the Apocalypse 

vincingly for Jesus; to carry the gospel into the 
remotest regions of Europe, as well as Asia, and 
to lay the deepest and most enduring foundations 
of the Christian religion for all coming ages of 
time and all future generations of men. Peter 
was unequal to such a task, but Paul was just 
the man. 

Such men God raises up at times — great men 
— and their coming marks a new era. And such 
men God is constantly raising up— lesser Pauls — 
to do some such similar work in restricted degree, 
but each differing from the other in endowment 
and in mission. 

Different from either Peter or Paul was 
James, the pastor of the Jerusalem Church. He 
had neither Peter's impetuosity nor Paul's intel- 
lect, but he had a pre-eminent capacity for work. 
He was the type for all ages of the Christian 
plodder. Such was his steady passion for daily, 
lowly work for God and for man, irrespective of 
class or creed or nationality, that the Jews, it is 
said, so loved and honored him as to permit him 
to enter the temple's holy place, a thing for any 
one else but a Jew being instant death. That was 
the man to write the most practical epistle in the 



Christian Diversity 1 25 

New Testament, **Wilt thou know, O vain man! 
that faith without works is dead?" That is its 
keynote. Paul could expound the deep philosophy 
of faith, but it took James to expound faith's 
practical philosophy in its all-important supple- 
ment of good works. As some one has said, 
^'God has plenty of ordinary work to be done, 
and plenty of ordinary workers to do it ;" that is, 
if they will do it; and James was raised up to 
show us how. 

It is stone by stone that builds the pyramid. 
It is the single deposit of the coral insect before 
it dies that builds the island from ocean depths 
for the habitation of man. It is the individual 
soldier's work that makes the conquering army. 
It is the unnoticed, every-day work of the Church- 
member, in the home, in society, and in the many- 
sided relations of life, that makes the aggressive 
prosperity of the Church. It is the aggregation 
of units that makes the might of the world's most 
powerful and successful enterprises. No man 
need despise himself or his mission as long as he 
can read the Epistle of St. James. 

Different still from any of the others was a 
fourth — John. Love was his distinguishing char- 



126 Christ the Apocalypse 

acteristic. His heart overflowed with a tender- 
ness as deep as it was refined, as holy as it was 
subHme. John's nature suggests a woman's love 
in its purest and most elevated forms. Other dis- 
ciples loved Jesus, but John lay on his very heart. 
His whole being was transfigured, enraptured, 
and glorified with the love of Christ. This was 
the heavenly aureole that crowned his brow, the 
transcendent motive, spring, that directed his 
whole being. This is the very genius of his Gospel 
— his loving adoration of the Savior of men. His 
epistles are Christian love-letters — the holiest of 
the holy, the sweetest of the sweet. No wonder 
that in every age the troubled heart has turned 
for balm to the fourteenth chapter of John, or to 
the first chapter of First John. It is on these 
sunny pages, beaming with the very love of 
heaven itself, that the dying eye lights up as it 
casts its last look; the dying ear listens raptur- 
ously to its last earthly sound. 

After all, it is love that wins. It is the strong- 
est force in the world. Men may resist the 
might of argument, the impact of genius, the 
tremendous force of persistent toil; but love 
forces its way to the heart, melts down the ada- 



Christian Diversity 127 

mantine opposition, seizes the victory, and makes 
the enemy himself shout for joy. To whomso- 
ever God has given a great, loving heart, it is 
an endowment of the most precious sort; pro- 
vided, like John, it is filled with the purifying 
and ennobling energy of the Holy Spirit. 

These men were like us in all things, sin not 
excepted. As they copied after Christ, so may 
we all. Even their very errors are beacon-lights 
to show us how we can do better. 



CHAPTER XI 
PRAYER 

/^ HRIST is the Apocalypse of Prayer. "Lord, 

^-^ teach us to pray," said the disciples; and 

Jesus did. ''After this manner therefore pray 

ye." Christ permitted, encouraged, commanded 

them to pray. He did not stop to remind them 

of natural laws that perhaps their prayers might 

collide with. Christ knew all about natural laws ; 

for they were all his own laws. If he commands 

us to pray, it is that our prayers shall be heard. 

He will look after the natural laws. 

The disciples were to speak to God directly. 

No third party was necessary. The sovereigns 

of earth, in State and Church, have allowed that 

privilege to few% and only on special occasions; 

but the Sovereign of earth and skies allows it 

to all men, as often as they please. Men have 

thought this too good, and so they have made 

to order a variety of intermediary and interces- 
128 



Prayer 129 

sory devices, saints and angels innumerable, the 
living and the dead, and especially the priestly 
and Churchly intervention. But Christ's "Pray 
ye" sweeps them all away at a stroke. 

Nothing can ever rob the soul of its high priv- 
ilege to approach the throne of God for itself. 
And Christ taught these disciples to come boldly 
to the throne of grace. That did not mean with 
insolence or presumption in the remotest degree, 
nor rashly without due thought, nor irreverently 
in any way, but with the greatest simplicity 
and freedom of thought and feeling and word 
and action. All the paraphernalia of Oriental 
sycophancy in approaching kings was to be set 
aside. With the heart of a child, and the lips 
of a child, and the love and trust of a child, and 
the freedom of a child, they were to talk to God. 

It is not magniloquent oratory God wants in 
prayer; neither is it the gorgeous display of 
genuflections and attitudes and ceremonies; nor 
is it the pompous ebullitions of praise and high- 
flown compliment and exterior adoration. It is 
the human heart talking to God's heart that God 
loves. -- 

This is incense, whether it comes from the 
9 



130 Christ the Apocalypse 

garret or the palace, the humblest closet or the 
most superb cathedral. "After this manner." So 
that prayer is possible to any man, woman, or 
child in the world, anywhere at any time, under 
any circumstances, in any age or period, in any 
land or clime — absolutely, entirely, universally 
possible to the end of time. 

Even the very words of Jesus need not be ut- 
tered ; for the dumb and the sick, and those whose 
silence is enforced, may pray Christ's prayer in 
the secret chambers of the heart. Nor need we 
always follow the precise form or order or phrase- 
ology or language of Christ's prayer. "After this 
manner," says Christ. Here are the essentials; 
after that, the largest latitude of thought and ex- 
pression and form. Nothing can be conceived 
freer, more simple, more adapted to humanity in 
its ever-varying and limitless wants, than the 
privilege of prayer Christ's teaching here indi- 
cates. 

"Our Father." That was a new conception 
of God to men. The noblest conception of God 
of the Roman and the Greek never included this 
idea. No heathen religion ever taught it. The 
majestic conceptions of the Jew were chiefly of 



Prayer 1 3 1 

the awful power and grandeur and justice of God^,.^ 
But the Fatherhood of God comes to us in Christ ^ 
as a revelation, like the rising sun banishing the 
darkness of the night, and the twinkling stars as 
well. And, like the sun, this glorious thought 
warms us into loving sympathy with God, and 
draws us towards him with the centripetal force 
of affection and confidence irresistible. 

"Our Father." Here is the twin thought — 
the brotherhood of man. If God is our Father, 
Ave are brothers and sisters, and therefore it is the 
family prayer we offer — not my Father, but ours. 
Thus our very first words to God bring us out 
of our selfishness and into the wide brotherhood 
of man. The more we pray for all others, the 
readier God ever is to hear us for our own wants. 

"In heaven." This links us to the skies. If we 
have a Father there, real indeed must be our in- 
terest in that world of glorious mystery. Our 
vision broadens, and we look beyond this sphere 
of time and behold our inheritance in the celestial 
world, incorruptible, undefiled, and that never 
passes away. 

"Hallowed be thy name." This puts the holy 
God in his rightful place, and us in ours. We 



132 Christ the Apocalypse 

must see God with the vivid perception of his 
glory if we would pray as sinful mortals should. 
Irreverence is ignorance, depravity, death. Rev- 
erence is light, beatitude, life. 

"Thy kingdom come." Here is loyalty in its 
love, its hope, its progressive spirit, its broadest 
philanthropy, its most joyous outlook, its noblest 
end. Christ's kingdom on earth is the consum- 
mation of all conceivable good to man. 

" Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." 
This is the highest will of life — high as the 
heavens. This is turning earth into heaven by 
bringing heaven down to earth. One rule for 
both. What a pinnacle of moral perfection this 
teaches us to aspire to and to realize! For why 
aspire to what can not be realized? 

"Give us this day our daily bread." God 
makes our bread every day — not stale bread, nor 
dear. It costs us gratitude, faith, and the labor 
of asking, and a humble sense of our dependence 
on him, not for a wholesale stock lasting a life- 
time, but for a day at a time. 

"And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive 
them that trespass against us." An equation in 
morals as difficult as it is sublime in its simplicity 



Prayer 133 

and grand in its outcome. This puts to the test 
the sincerity and strength of our desires for God's 
forgiveness, and enables us to measure exactly 
for ourselves both one and the other. ^^^ 

"And lead us not into temptation." Pride | 
dares the worst to come on. True courage never 
underestimates an enemy, and is not afraid to 
cherish a wholesome dread. No man is quite 
sure of himself when the ordeal trial gets seven 
times heated more than is wont. We ought to 
ask to be saved from sore temptation, and take 
good care ourselves to keep off the enemy's 
ground and out of the range of his fiery darts. / 

"But deliver us from evil." Sin in the ab- 
stract, in all its principles, persuasions, fascina- 
tions; sin in the concrete, in all its practices, per- 
sons, and its most powerful impersonation of 
all — Satan. 

"For thine is the kingdom, and the power, 
and the glory." There is no dominion but God's; 
no might but his ; no glory but the Divine. There 
may be satellites and planets; but there is only 
one sun. 

"Enter into thy closet, and shut the door, and 
pray to thy Father in heaven, and he will re- 



I 34 Christ the Apocalypse 

ward thee openly." That was Christ's own 
plan., His closet was the mountain-side. The 
midnight shut him in, and he talked with 
God alone until the morning. Here his soul 
drank deep refreshing as he turned from the 
weariness and weakness of earthly toil. Blessed 
compensation for the chilling disappointments and 
the disheartening sorrows that multiplied upon 
him every day! Here glorious vistas of hope 
brightened into realization. His Father's smile 
and kiss of love was the seal of God's admiring 
approval, and the fresh afflatus of the Holy Spirit 
gave new courage and strength for the conflicts 
of the morrow. 

The Christian life without closet-prayer is 
too onerous, too discouraging, too overwhelm- 
ing in its griefs, too dark in its horizon outlook, 
too mighty in its enmities, to be endured. Alone 
with God the shadows flee away, the invigora- 
tion divine braces us afresh, hope and heart take 
wing again, and we come forth as the strong man 
to run his race. 
\ Prayer has been said to be the "key of the 

morning and the bolt of the evening." It opens 
the day in blessing, it closes it in safety. So 



Prayer 135 

Christ opened and closed each day he spent on 
earth ; and so should all men. Christ prayed with 
his family; that is, his disciples — and the loaves 
and fishes grew into thousands, and the hungry 
were fed. That is the best way to feed a family. 
One loaf with God's blessing is worth more than 
two hundred pennyworth of bread without. And 
Christ gave thanks to God before he broke the 
first loaf. It is God's bread we eat, and we should 
thank him. In thanking him, we are amazed to 
find that we live not by bread alone, but by every 
word that proceedeth out of his mouth — words 
that work miracles of supply beyond all our cal- 
culations. 

Christ teaches us all about prayer answered; 
how, and when, and where; to what degree, and 
with unfailing uncertainty, like God's faithful- 
ness itself. Christ's life is the great object-lesson 
he gives to illustrate his own declaration, "Ask 
and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock 
and it shall be opened unto you." In that life 
God's delays but cumulate his answers to prayer ; 
apparent failures always end in triumphant an- 
swers — answers not such as we had expected, but 
grander far than we were able to conceive of; 



136 Christ the Apocalypse 

answers near and soon; answers remote, con- 
tinuous, and ever magnifying. 

We are taught to offer the prayer of undoubt- 
ing faith, and leave the rest to God, who will, 
in his own time and way, do for us exceeding 
abundantly more than we can ask or think. 



SECTION III 

problemjs 



Christ is the Apocalypse of the vast sociological and other 
problems of to-day. He is their origin, urgency, solution. 
Without Christ there would be none. The world marches 
onward ; but it is the Christ truth that spurs it on from 
behind and beckons it on from before. Men would not know 
that they were so badly off but that Christ has told them,. They 
would not attem.pt better things but that he has shown them, 
how. Men know m,ore of Christ than they think, and owe far 
more to him than they own. The Christian atmosphere is 
everywhere, and men can scarce breathe anywhere without 
taking in something of its freedom and inspiration. Christ is 
the world's only hope. 

137 



CHAPTER I 
WAR 

T N all wars there is a wrong somewhere. If 
-■■ it is right to fight a band of brigands — and 
it is — it is wrong for men ever to turn brigands. 
If England and Wellington were right in fight- 
ing the battle of Waterloo — and who will say 
they were not? — it was wrong for Napoleon to 
dominate Europe with the sword, and attempt 
to crush the last refuge of liberty in Europe — 
Great Britain. If it would be surely right for 
the Christian natives of Europe and America to 
stop the Turkish massacre of the Armenians at 
the point of the bayonet, how abominably wrong 
for the nefarious Turkish government to slaughter 
in cold blood those vast multitudes of our fellow- 
Christians! It is a more Christian thing to pre- 
vent a nation from enslaving its fellow-men, even 
by the sword, than to allow them to go on un- 
hindered in their work of death. 

139 



140 Christ the Apocalypse 

But all wars that originated in revenge, or 
coveteousness, or pride, or malice, or lust of con- 
quest, or any similar motive, are v^holly bad. 
That means most of all the v^ars in the v^orld. 
No good, per se, can come out of such v^ars, un- 
less indeed it is true that a corrupt tree bringeth 
forth good fruit, and that the most hateful vices 
can produce excellent virtues. If good ever comes 
out of such wars — and it often has come — it is only 
because an overruling and merciful Providence 
has brought that good out; but no thanks at all 
to the wars for that. 

But has not militarism some good features? 
Certainly. It does men good to learn to stand 
erect, to obey orders promptly, to march in uni- 
son, to respect their superiors, to keep themselves 
clean and tidy, to cultivate personal courage, to 
cherish loyal sentiments towards their country, 
and to be willing even to sacrifice themselves, if 
need be, in defense of the right. These are vir- 
tuous things, and they would be if there was no 
such thing as war in the world. 

But such praiseworthy things can not make 
good the evil things in militarism and war, with 
which they stand side by side. War, as a rule. 



War 1 4 1 

lets loose all the wickedest passions of fallen hu- 
man nature, the very demons of evil, which, if 
not checked would tear the world to pieces. 
"They that take the sword," said Christ, "shall 
perish with the sword." War is self -propagat- 
ing and self-destructive. War begets war. All 
wars, as a rule, are the progeny of previous ones, 
and the parents of coming ones. A great con- 
queror is followed by a greater conqueror ; victory 
on the battlefield is followed by defeat, and de- 
feat is succeeded by after victory. Every new 
device in arms and armaments is always suc- 
ceeded by a newer. The more deadly and swift 
a weapon is, there is always found a deadlier and 
swifter. The science of destruction takes on a 
wider sweep at each turn; and so it has gone on, 
and ever will. 

The results of war are more uncertain to-day 
than ever before in the history of the world, be- 
cause no one can tell who may happen to possess 
the advantage in the latest and most effective de- 
vices for destruction. An army, like the host of 
Sennacherib, may be smitten to death in a night 
by some new scientific angel of destruction, which 

is perhaps at this moment descending into some 
i6 



142 Christ the Apocalypse 

discoverer's brain. Ships of war can scarce stay 
in first-class effectiveness for a year, or even a 
month. Nelson's old "wooden walls" are only 
memories of long ago, and the great steel-incased 
monsters of to-day will, most likely, vanish even 
more quickly into oblivion. 

War is a frightful waste of the strength of 
nations. It sheds rivers of young blood — the 
blood of men between twenty and forty — and that 
means often the blood of wives and children left 
helpless, and of the old left destitute. It is fatal 
to commerce, and trade, and agriculture, and all 
industry and useful arts. It checks mental 
growth, disintegrates society, loosens the re- 
straints of all law and order and authority, and is 
an object-lesson on wickedness which a genera- 
tion who witnesses it can never forget. It plunges 
a nation into enormous debts and financial em- 
barrassments, which last for generations and 
sometimes for centuries. It takes long periods of 
peace to recover from its effects, and often those 
effects are never recovered from at all, but na- 
tional dissolution ensues. 

Purely military nations have never yet been 
a permanent success in the world. The case of 



War 143 

Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte 
are renowned examples of this; and less distin- 
guished examples teach the same lesson. Ancient 
Rome never could have lasted so long but for its 
equitable jurisprudence and its moral power over 
men, such as it was. The strength of England 
to-day is not in her great armies, vast fleets, and 
''flying squadrons," but in her dominant love of 
freedom and fair play, her just and righteous 
treatment of her subjects, the great moral ideas 
and principles that permeate her whole political, 
legal, economic, and commercial systems. But 
for these, all her mighty armaments would not 
hold her stupendous empire together for a dec- 
ade. The same thing is true of the United 
States. Good government anywhere is simply 
another name for government by kindness, which 
is but one form of conquering by love. There is 
not a civilized nation in the world that holds the 
fealty of its people but by Christ's principle of 
kindness. The strongest empires on earth are 
just where it has the fullest play and widest ap- 
plication. 

Love is Christ's dynamic force, which is in- 
finitely stronger than all the armies and navies 



144 Christ the Apocalypse 

in the world. The world still laughs this to scorn. 
But faint glimpses of its truth begin to dawn upon 
the minds of men through the stern logic of facts. 
Never before had men so little confidence in the 
issues of war as now. The very vastness of their 
armaments betrays their fears of what the results 
of any given campaign might be. They are so 
full of militarism that they are more than ever 
afraid of militarism. 

Arbitration is a real and growing factor in the 
settlements of the disputes of nations. It has done 
immense service in the latter half of the nineteenth 
century. It will do vastly more in the twentieth. 
Arbitration is based on the principle of mutual 
fairness, respect, and kindliness of intention ; and 
what is that but a measure of that brotherly love 
which Christ enjoined upon all men? 

It will pay for nations to keep cool, to listen 
to reason, and, above all, to listen to Christ : "As 
ye would that men should do unto you, do ye 
likewise unto them." There is more power in 
that one precept to govern the world than in all 
the armies and navies on the face of the earth. 



CHAPTER II 
LABOR AND CAPITAL 

/^^HRIST alone can solve the portentous prob- 
^-^ lem of how to end the conflict between labor 
and capital. This very struggle, like all other 
great sociological upheavals of the day, is rooted 
in the Christ-truth, no matter whether men ac- 
knowledge it or not, and no matter what accre- 
tions of evil have gathered on either its roots or 
branches. 

Slavery has been the doom of the laboring man 
from time immemorial, and, for the most part, 
an unresisting slavery. The battle between labor 
and capital is only a very modern thing, because 
it is only of late that men have woke up to see 
something more clearly of the rights of man as 
man; that is only saying that the fundamental 
ethics of Christ have percolated very slowly into 
the depths of the human mind. But what the 

slave of ancient history and the serf of the Dark 
lo 145 



146 Christ the Apocalypse 

Ages did not see, the modern workingman does 
see — that he has inahenable rights. Christ has 
taught him that. There are still not a few to 
whom Christ says: "Go to, now, ye rich men; 
weep and howl for your miseries that shall come 
upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your 
garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver 
is cankered, and the rust of them shall be as a wit- 
ness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it 
were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for 
the last days. Behold the hire of the laborers 
which have reaped down your fields, which is of 
you kept back by fraud, crieth, and the cries of 
them which have reaped are entered into the ears 
of the Lord of Sabaoth." 

The men of grinding monopoly are not all 
dead yet. To get the largest amount of work for 
the smallest amount of pay is the keystone in the 
arch of many a financial system. So long as em- 
ployers work by two rules — first and foremost, to 
look out for themselves; second, to let the work- 
ingman look out for himself — there will be sepa- 
rate and hostile camps of war, combinations, 
unions, strikes. Self will always antagonize self. 



Labor and Capital 147 

One combination will always create another. One 
war will always be followed by another. 

The workingman has his just claims. They 
are founded as deeply in humanity and Christian- 
ity as any other. They must be honored, and 
honored to the full. And they will be. Canute 
could as well stop the incoming tide as any power 
on earth can stop the rising tide of the working- 
man's just rights. That tide rises apace, and will 
sweep away all the monopolies and combines and 
plutocracies on earth; for Christ is at its back. 

The same fate will overtake the unjust claims 
of the workingman too. Injustice is no monopoly 
of employers. The workingman can be quite as 
unjust as he, and he often is. He can demand a 
wage he never earned; he can be remiss and in- 
efficient and unfaithful. His combination can be 
quite as autocratic, unreasonable, and cruel as any 
union of employers. He can show himself a veri- 
table "dog in the manger," who will neither work 
himself nor let anybody else work. He can be 
violent, abusive, vindictive. He can arrogate to 
himself the sole title of laboring man, while his 
employer works as hard as he, and, in many in- 



148 Christ the Apocalypse 

stances, a good deal harder. He can discount re- 
sponsibility which he utterly refuses to share, and 
which he would be totally incompetent to shoulder 
for an hour. He can create a standard of false 
values, raising the worth of his own products too 
high, and making that of other people's altogether 
too low. He can forget that all men are not en- 
dowed with the capacity, foresight, business abil- 
ity, and energy of character to conduct success- 
fully a large business; and he can remember the 
absurd communism of demagogues about human 
equality of possessions. He can strike; that is, 
he can sometimes take a mean advantage of his 
employers and of the entire public to obstruct or 
destroy public business and injure every interest 
of society, and himself the worst of all. 

These, and things like these, never help the 
workingman, nor ever will. It is not by force or 
fraud or violence he will ever gain his cause. It 
will be won only by reason and righteousness; 
that is, by patient, persistent effort on the lines of 
Christ's royal law, his Golden Rule, of "doing to 
others as ye would that they should do to you." 
Nothing has ever yet been gained in any other 
v/ay. It is certain nothing ever will be. The work- 



Labor and Capital 149 

ingman is coming to see more and more clearly 
that this is the citadel of his strength, and that by 
this sign he will conquer. 

Obedience to Christ's royal law would vastly 
help the employer, who would find it to be his 
highest business wisdom to enlist the co-operative 
interest of the employees by giving them some sort 
of partnership in the concern, as many business 
men are now beginning to do. It would equally 
benefit the employee. 

The workingman has shown a splendid talent 
for organization, and he has shown likewise a 
high appreciation of those qualities that make for 
the highest success in life ; such as sobriety, hon- 
esty, steady industry, and other similar virtues. 
All he needs is to advance further and universally 
on the same lines, and he will very largely solve 
his own problem. He can change places with his 
masters if he choose; he can himself become the 
capitalist, the employer of labor, and, in multi- 
tudes of cases, an independent man. 



CHAPTER III 
WEALTH 

T ^ T^EALyTH, its acquisition, distribution, and 
' ^ use, is another of the tremendous ques- 
tions of the day. Christ never forbade a man 
becoming rich, or condemned him merely for 
being rich. If Christ thought it was a sin for 
Job to be rich, and Abraham and Solomon, and 
a good many other Old Testament millionaires, 
he never said so, nor even hinted that he thought 
so. There were rich people around him, and some 
of them his own friends ; but he never denounced 
them merely because they were rich, nor taught 
his disciples that wealth was a crime. 

If it is a crime to be rich, then Christ taught 
men principles of life and conduct which will 
necessarily make criminals of hosts of men, and, 
indeed, of whole nations of men, to a greater or 
less degree. Christianity, more than any other 
religion, recognizes the special gifts and endow- 
150 



Wealth 1 5 1 

ments of men and shows them how to cultivate 
and use their talents so that the one talent gains 
two, or five, or ten. Many men are born traders. 
God made them that, and they would not fulfill 
their mission otherwise. If they did not trade, 
they would hide their Lord's money in the nap- 
kin of a sinful neglect; and if they do trade, on 
Christ's principle, they will oftentimes get rich, 
as cause produces effect. 

But did not Christ say, ''How hardly shall 
they that have riches enter into the kingdom of 
God?" ''And it is easier for a camel to go 
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man 
to enter into the kingdom of God?" Yes, and 
Christ explained immediately after what he meant 
by that — "they that trust in riches." It is not 
the riches, but the trusting in riches, that keeps 
men out of the kingdom of God. Those who thus 
are swollen with the pride and abuse of wealth 
will find it as hard to squeeze into the kingdom of 
God as a camel through a needle's eye. 

But "the things impossible with men are pos- 
sible with God." Grace can keep a rich man 
humble, though it takes a good deal of grace to 
do it. But, then, Christ told the rich young man 



152 Christ the Apocalypse 

to sell all that he had and give it to the poor. That 
is just as true as that Christ has not told every 
rich man to do that. Christ knew this young man 
better than he knew himself. He knew how he 
got his wealth, and what influence it had on him, 
and what final mischief it was sure to do him. 
Christ's diagnosis of this case was as infallibly 
correct as the cure he proposed was the only safe 
and possible one. A radical heroic treatment of 
that sort is likewise, with scarce a doubt, the only 
proper and safe course to-day with many a rich 
man too. 

It is not money, but the love of money, that 
is the root of all evil. To make an idol of gold is 
to break the first commandment, and with as 
vicious and disastrous an idolatry as any in the 
world. "Wealth gotten by vanity shall be di- 
minished," and it is just as true that "the hand 
of the diligent maketh rich." The richest nations 
in the world to-day are the most Christian nations, 
and it is their Christianity that has made them 
rich. This is true after making the very largest 
allowances for all the iniquities of trade as prac- 
ticed among these nations, and there are plenty 
of them. 



Wealth 1 5 3 

Take out all the diabolical business done in 
alcoholic liquors and opium, and all the injurious 
trade in tobacco and narcotics; all the cheating, 
lying, and deception, and fraud ; all the immorali- 
ties, oppressions, and objectionable features of 
every kind, and the Christian trade of Great 
Britain and the United States — to take two 
samples alone — proves overwhelmingly that the 
hand of the diligent maketh rich. It can not be 
denied that these two nations are largely con- 
trolled by Christian thought and morals and in- 
spiration. Their commerce is certainly, on the 
whole, conducted on Christian principles ; that is, 
of fair dealing, honest equivalents, and fidelity to 
honorable engagements. God made these people 
traders, and he has made them rich. It is per- 
fectly right that they should be rich, and that all 
men should be rich who have the ability and 
energy and honesty and righteous opportunity to 
become rich. 

God has put the gold and silver in the mine 
for men to dig. He has strewn the precious stones 
along the river-beds for men to gather. He has 
filled the ocean with fish for men to catch. He 
has reared the forests for men to hew. He has 



154 Christ the Apocalypse 

enriched the soil for men to cultivate ; and he has 
raised up inventors to find out agents, like steam 
and electricity, to facilitate all these labors and 
the interchange of commodities between the na- 
tions of the earth. The winds and the lightning, 
and many other forces in nature, are God's reser- 
voirs of power put there for men to harness and 
use. Man is king of nature by Divine right, and 
all he can do to subdue and rule and utilize the 
whole world is within his right. 

Christ, more than all other teachers, has 
sharpened man's intellect, roused his energies, di- 
rected his faculties, fired his righteous ambitions, 
given motive to his aims, and strength and con- 
tinuity to his efforts. This is all true in every 
moral and spiritual path he is to tread, and all 
equally true in every material and earthly path 
too. It is a sin for many a Christian man to be 
poor. His poverty means that he has been un- 
faithful to the fundamental principles of that 
Christianity he professes. If he had been a faith- 
ful Christian, he would not have been a poor 
Christian. Extravagance and negligence and un- 
faithfulness will impoverish anybody. Industry 
and thrift, and honest carefulness and persevering 



Wealth 155 

effort will, as a rule, give competence, if not 
riches, to almost anybody. ''The poor ye have 
with you always." Nothing can prevent calamity, 
and death, and loss at times, as the lot of man. 
The wisest planning can never forestall disaster. 
The savings of a lifetime can go up in smoke in 
an hour, or be wrecked upon a lee-shore. Many 
a good man knows how to earn money, but he does 
not know how to keep from losing it. The world 
has its thieves, plenty of them ; some on the high- 
w^ay, pistol in hand; others behind the counter, 
dressed in broadcloth and full of smiles. It is 
hard to get honestly ; it is much harder honestly to 
keep anything in this world. Between flood and 
fire, deceit and villainy, sickness and death, and 
the thousand ways that lead down to righteous 
poverty, the wonder is that more do not go that 
way than do. 

Worse than all these is the deliberate waste 
occasioned by crime. Strong drink is one chief 
cause of all the poverty in the world. There is 
as much money spent every year on liquor and 
tobacco as would feed and clothe, house and sus- 
tain comfortably, all the poor on the face of the 
earth. God has decreed these people to be rich; 



156 Christ the Apocalypse 

they themselves have decreed that they shall be 
poor through their wicked waste of drink and 
narcotics. 

But do not the rich get richer and the poor 
poorer continually? Is not the world to-day the 
monopolists' paradise? Where stands the mil- 
lionaire but on the high throne of the multi-mil- 
lionaire, and climbing higher every day? Where 
is the poor man but sinking deeper in the mud of 
poverty continually ? Did God intend one man to 
own two hundred millions of dollars, and another 
man scarce two hundred cents? No; no more 
than he intended all men to possess exactly alike. 
All men are not equal in brains, push, foresight, 
and hard work. The clever, painstaking, faithful 
worker ought to earn more than the slack, worth- 
less, heedless, lazy man. Men deserve to be paid 
according to what they earn. If they do not earn 
much, they ought not to get much. He that 
worketh not, neither should he eat. 

But what right has any one man to own mil- 
lions or even hundreds of millions? He has a 
right, if he came by it honestly and is using it 
righteously. Christ is not a judge or divider of 
property among men. He lets them do that them- 



Wealth 157 

selves, but he requires that they do it righteously. 
A man can not properly own millions, unless he 
has defrauded nobody in gaining this wealth. How 
many millionaires are there in the world who have 
become millionaires without defrauding anybody ? 
Let themselves answer that. If a man's millions 
have been acquired by fraud or violence or dis- 
honesty, then his millions will burn him like 
molten lead. He could hang no greater curse 
round his neck, nor possess a more indisputable 
title to damnation. But if a man, by dint of 
honest industry, fearless enterprise, great abilities 
righteously employed, does get rich, what are his 
riches for ? To be kept for himself ? Surely not. 
He can use for himself those vast riches as well 
as he can eat five hundred dinners a day, sleep 
on a thousand beds every night, wear five thou- 
sand suits of clothes at a time, live in a hundred 
palaces at once. The limits of our personal needs 
are small. ''Having food and raiment, let us 
therewith be content." We may as well be, for 
we can not enjoy much more. These two things, 
with what they imply of necessary accompani- 
ments, embrace about all that is absolutely needed 
for our bodily comfort. 



158 Christ the Apocalypse 

What is a man to do with his honest milHons ? 
Use them to make more? Well, if he does, what 
then? There must be some ultimate object in 
making money. What is it ? Christ gives us the 
apocalyptic answer: "Charge them that are rich 
in this world that they be not high-minded, nor 
trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, 
who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that 
they do good, that they be rich in good works, 
ready to distribute, willing to communicate." God 
allows that man to collect his millions in order 
to scatter them. It comes in that it may go out 
again, like the streams into the sea, that sends up 
its vapors to fall again in rain on the refreshed 
earth. A stagnant ocean is an ocean of rotten- 
ness and death. An ocean of wealth, held in stag- 
nant selfishness, rots, and its stench of death fills 
the world. That is why millionaires are hated. 
That is why such wealth, gotten by vanity and 
held in the tight grip of selfishness, will yet be 
torn to pieces in the fury of an incensed world. 
If the rich mean to keep their wealth, they will 
have to give it away. There is no other way. 

The millionaire's wealth should go to help the 
poor. But how ? Distribute equally a charity to 



Wealth 159 

each? No, assuredly. Indiscriminate charity is 
no New Testament doctrine nor practice. False, 
unwise charity is worse than none. Christ helped 
no man who was quite able to help himself. He 
never will. We never should. Christ helped men 
to help themselves. That is the true principle of 
charity and of all help given our fellow-men. 
Christ pauperized no man, and the millionaire has 
no business to do it either. When Christ healed 
the paralytic at the pool of Siloam, he healed him 
because there was no other that could or would; 
but after he was healed, Christ did not shoulder 
his bed for him ; he had to do that himself. Christ 
lifted men up to health and life, but they had to 
walk on their own feet afterwards. The rich man 
can work miracles of that kind, too, with his 
money. He can help multitudes to their feet, and 
then let them walk forth themselves into indus- 
trious, manly, useful, and fruitful lives. 

But what forms shall this wise distribution 
of riches take? Christ tells us — forms as various 
and different as the cases require and as sound 
sense and intelligence and the grace and wisdom 
of God suggest. Christ treated no two alike. He 
was wise according to circumstances. Rich men 



1 60 Christ the Apocalypse 

need not ask how their wealth is to be distributed 
among their needy fellow-men, or for any one 
of the ten thousand beneficent purposes which are 
awaiting their Christian liberality. A man who 
is clever enough and wise enough to accumulate 
an honest fortune is wise enough to find out, if 
he wants, how best to use it for the good of 
his fellow-men and the glory of God. If rich 
men are so disposed, they will find no difficulty 
in settling those questions. And it will be well 
for them to be so disposed, as many, thank God, 
are. The muttering of the coming storms can be 
heard without much of an ear-trumpet to help. 
There are underground volcanoes in society that 
begin to heave ominously, and if the lava of burn- 
ing wrath once bursts, its first objective point will 
be to make some new burials, like Pompeii and 
Herculaneum of old, of the millionaire despotisms 
of the age. 

It will avert disaster for the rich to obey Christ 
in the distribution and use of their wealth; dis- 
aster to the fabric of society, which already tot- 
ters to its fall through selfish unused or misused 
riches ; disaster to the rich man himself, who may 
find his riches have taken wing and his oppor- 



Wealth 1 6 1 

tunity of doing and getting good gone forever. 
The rich man has a first-class chance of being the 
happiest of men, the most beneficent of men, the 
most beloved of men, the noblest of men, the 
safest of men, for time, and for eternity too. He 
can put his money in the Bank of Heaven, and it 
will be safe there, and bear interest at ten thou- 
sand per cent forever. He can come out of his 
triple armor of selfishness, and make his wealth 
fly to the four winds of heaven until it encircles 
the earth with blessing. He can plant its seeds 
over vast areas of human suffering and need, and 
reap harvests of perennial and ever-multiplying 
good to the widow, the orphan, the sick, the weak, 
the forlorn, the ignorant, the depraved — a harvest 
which will go on multiplying long after his bones 
have moldered to dust. He can flash forth the 
light of truth and knowledge, and especially the 
knowledge of God that saves the lost, until it 
spreads its ennobling beauty and saving glory 
over whole continents of darkness and sin, and 
men are by whole nations recovered to manhood, 
to righteousness, and peace. He can secure the 
undying love and gratitude of generations to come 

and of many generations. He can make friends 
II 



1 62 Christ the Apocalypse 

of the mammon of unrighteousness, and when 
he fails on earth he wih be received into everlast- 
ing habitations. 

The cruel, selfish, money-worshiping miser is 
in hell already, and will soon be in a deeper hell 
below. The royal millionaire, whose Christly 
heart and hand touch wealth for the holy purposes 
which are its only purposes, even already is in 
paradise, and may soon hear the Master say, 
*'Well done, good and faithful servant." - 



CHAPTER IV 
LAW OF GIVING 

T3UT is there not a Christly law of giving? 
^—^ On what principle shall men give to the 
Church of God, to philanthropy, to the poor, to 
any and every benevolent work? Love, the con- 
straining love of Christ, is that principle. Christ- 
love in the human soul is the omnipotent motive 
of all human toil, sacrifices, service for God or 
man. It is the Christ-spirit transformed into the 
human heart by the Holy Spirit that originates 
all good within and without and around. With- 
out that love, the rich man will not know how^ to 
give, nor the poor man either. The New Testa- 
ment boundaries of giving are all set by love, and 
there are no restraints on that love's generosity 
except its own. 

God told the Jew to give tithes. His love re- 
quired to measure up its generosity that far. It 
was necessary for the Jew to be told that. His 

163 



164 Christ the Apocalypse 

religion — which was Christianity in its incipient, 
infantile stage — needed very specific directions for 
its practice, and this one among the rest. The 
Christian religion is too mature and full and vast 
and boundless in its spirit of self-sacrifice to need 
the minute directions of Judaism. A thousand 
things are left to the dictates of faith and hope, 
and, above all, love. Christ is the whole of Bible 
religion, and includes all its parts. He came, not 
to destroy any good thing in Judaism, but to ful- 
fill every good thing it had, and this tithing law 
among the rest. It is as true, and even more, that 
a Christian has no need to tithe in the absence of 
the specific reiteration of the Jewish law on that 
point, as that the Christian has no need to cir- 
cumcise his heart because he is not commanded 
to keep the Jewish circumcision in the flesh. 

Christianity assuredly includes the generosity 
of tithes, but it is by no means limited by the 
generosity of tithes. The Christian must certainly 
be as good a giver as the Jew ; but to be as good 
a giver as the Jew, he must be a very much better 
giver than the Jew, since his superior religion 
imposes a vastly superior obligation. Tithing is 
too narrow a restriction for a Christian's large- 



Law of Giving 165 

ness of heart. God has left him a wider sweep 
for the exercise of Christly love. He can soar on 
its beneficent wings as high and as far as love 
will carry him. But this large New Testament 
liberty can never mean that we do less than the 
Jew. God's law required all Jews to tithe. 
Christ's law of love requires all Christians at least 
to tithe. 

The Christian may often well give more than 
a tithe; he certainly ought never to do less; and 
if his Christly love is as warm as it should be, he 
certainly never will. The Christ-love of the New 
Testament takes the place of the tithe law of the 
Old Testament, not to lower the standard of giv- 
ing, but to elevate it. It fulfills the Jewish law 
by enlarging its scope as well as ennobling its 
motives. 

But does the New Testament give no hint as 
to systematic, proportionate giving? It does. 
"Upon the first day of the week, let every one of 
you lay by him in store as God hath prospered 
him." That w^as St. Paul's systematic, pro- 
portionate giving for the Corinthians, and for us 
as well. "As God hath prospered him." God has 
prospered some men by giving them millions. 



1 66 Christ the Apocalypse 

How much should they lay by for him? The 
tithe law will scarcely do to answer that for them. 
If a man has an income of $50,000 a year, $5,000 
is a very small sum indeed for him to lay by for 
God when he lays by $45,000 for himself. If a 
man has $500 a year, and lays by $50 of that for 
God, he gives a very large and generous sum in- 
deed, and especially when the balance of $450 
has to feed and clothe a family. If the Christ- 
love in the poor man prompts him to tithe his 
$500 for God, the Christ-love in the rich man's 
heart might prompt him perhaps to take the tithe 
for himself, and give the nine-tenths to God, which 
he might very well do. For if a poor man can 
live and keep his family on $450 a year, a rich 
man might live and keep his family pretty well 
on $5,000 a year. God says to both, Let love 
decide — the constraining love of Christ. And if 
it does, it is not hard to see what the result will be. 
But why tithe at all ? Without the tithe com- 
putation how can you tell how God has prospered 
you? or how much? Why not carry on business 
without taking stock, or even making out a yearly 
balance-sheet? Tithing means taking stock, 
balancing accounts, business system. God does 



Law of Giving 1 67 

business himself that way. He does nothing hap- 
hazard. He is the best and most accurate Busi- 
ness Manager, so to speak, in the universe. And 
he wants his children to be something like him- 
self in that, as well as in everything else. Chris- 
tians have no right to do business with everything 
at loose ends. Christianity teaches us system, or- 
der, accuracy. There are thousands of failures 
traceable to the want of strict business system and 
accurate keeping of accounts. 

There are many Christians who do not know 
what they are giving or ought to give. Their 
Christian liberality has no order, system, or in- 
telligent management whatever. They imagine 
they are doing most generous things when they 
are actually doing most meager and miserly 
things. And a man may be actually giving more 
than he ought without knowing it, though that 
is rather a rare and unlikely occurrence. 

If a man finds out what his tenth is, he finds 
out at the same time what the other nine-tenths 
are too. If he discovers how much of his income 
should go to God's cause, he at the same time 
discovers how much he has to expend in what is 
left. His division of the whole in God's direction 



1 68 Christ the Apocalypse 

hints at systematic and wise distribution of the 
remainder, and that is what multitudes of men 
badly need, for they expend on themselves with- 
out knowing well whether their means will really 
justify the expenditure or not, but trust to good 
fortune to make payment somehow or at some 
time. This brings multitudes into financial straits 
and even ruin, from which they never escape. 
Even on the ground of men's own financial inter- 
ests it will pay them to tithe. 

"Upon the first day of the week;" that is, of 
every week. That simplifies Christian giving — 
to give steadily and very often. The weekly offer- 
ing suited the Corinthians well ; it suits admirably 
all classes in all ages, and there can scarcely be 
a good reason assigned why it should nol suit 
everybody. God's own gifts do not, as a rule, 
come in great masses and at long intervals. He 
mostly gives us little at a time, and often^ and 
regularly. 

The wisdom of the man who waits until he 
dies to give great masses of wealth to Christian 
and philanthropic causes is on a par with that 
of the man who postpones his good actions until 
the time is past for ever doing them at all. The 



Law of Giving 169 

rich legacy that was to be, never is, for the reason 
that there was no legacy to leave. Riches, great 
or small, are always an uncertain quantity. Men 
should use them while they may. A dollar given 
to-day may have grown in the interest and com- 
pound interest of the good it has done to ten thou- 
sand a hundred years hence. And who can pay 
that compound interest of good that money may 
do if given early and often? The rich man's 
thousand may have grown to a million, the poor 
man's dollar to a thousand, long before either 
of them dies. The short accounts are always the 
most safe and profitable reckonings. Long debts 
oftentimes turn out bad debts, and debts to God 
are no exception. Weekly payments of our debts 
to God are like weekly payments of our debts 
to men; they give excellent results all round. 

Will not this weekly payment system greatly 
help us in solving that problem which seems to 
puzzle many people, ''What am I to understand 
by my income?" If a man is at a loss to know 
what his income means when spread over ten 
years, or five, or even one, he can hardly fail to 
know what it is in a week — in each week. Surely 
he can find out how much the Lord has prospered 



170 Christ the Apocalypse 

him in the last seven days, and if he is still some- 
what hesitant as to what the tenth of that financial 
prosperity might be which is to go to God, he 
might ask himself to make out how much that 
tenth ought to be if it were coming to himself. 
"Let every one of you" do this, said Paul. 
There were some pretty poor Christians in that 
Corinthian Church. There have always been 
some pretty poor Christians in all Churches since. 
Yet "every one" includes them all. St. Paul made 
no exceptions. But are there not some too poor 
to give anything? Yes, if there are any so poor 
that they have absolutely nothing. But who are 
they ? Not the man who has only ten cents ; for 
he can give one, and the other nine with God's 
blessing are worth more to him than the whole 
ten without. There is no man so poor that he 
can not afford to keep the Sabbath-day. He can 
well afford to give God the one-seventh of his 
time, and he can as well afford to give God the 
one-tenth of his money, no matter how little he 
has. In both cases he is a clear gainer, and in the 
one case as much as in the other. Christ did not 
say that the poor widow who cast her two mites 
into the treasury was too poor to give, though 



Law of Giving 171 

that was her whole hving. He did not say that 
she did wrong in doing that, or that she was 
going to suffer for doing it. The eye of God that 
saw into that woman's poor purse and large heart 
and bare home, saw plenty of ways to supply all 
her need, and we can well believe that he did 
supply them all. And the poor man and woman 
who give of their deep poverty need never fear 
that the same Eye is looking on and will look 
after their welfare too. God has a way of re- 
membering those who deal generously with him, 
rewarding them often a hundred-fold in this pres- 
ent time, and with life everlasting by and by. 
There are many wealthy men to-day who declare 
that they have prospered because they gave, and 
there are men who were once rich could testify, if 
they would, that they came to poverty because 
they did not give. That is only translating into 
the actual experience of men what God has said, 
''There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth ; there 
is that withholdeth more than is meet, and it 
tendeth to poverty." 

"But every one is to lay by him in store" 
voluntarily. It is a free-will offering of Chris- 
tian love. If men do not give from love, they do 



172 Christ the Apocalypse 

not give at all, in the Christian sense. The Chris- 
tian should pray as he breathes, without being 
squeezed or scolded or entrapped into doing it; 
he should give in the same way. It ought to be 
his normal life. It is, if his life is truly hid with 
Christ in God. If this is true — and it is true — 
will it not sweep away a good many doings of the 
Church and of individual Christians in raising 
funds for religious and benevolent purposes? 

St. Paul's simple rule, if universally employed, 
would supply all the funds that the Church ever 
needs, that all branches of missionary, philan- 
thropic, and charitable enterprises ever need, and 
furnish an abundance of money for new enter- 
prises on all these lines, which have not yet been 
undertaken, and that without those *' collections" 
which Paul deprecated when he arrived among 
the Corinthians; in fact, without asking any one 
for a cent. If Christ's cause is what we believe 
it to be, the joy of giving ought to be one of the 
most eagerly accepted of all joys. We can not 
but give as our hearts beat with such unutterable 
love to Christ and the souls he has bought with 
his blood. Giving will be a passion holy, irre- 
sistible. Christlike. 



CHAPTER V 
PATRIOTISM 

CHRIST was a patriot. He is the Apocalypse 
of patriotism. The land of his birth was 
dear to Jesus. No man knew it better or loved 
it more. He knew Palestine as only the pedestrian 
can know a country. He had scaled its moun- 
tains, traversed its valleys, searched out its nooks 
and dells, forded its streams, drunk of its well, 
penetrated its forests, wandered over its plains, 
plunged into its deserts, viewed with delight its 
charming landscapes, stood on its rocky summits, 
sailed over its lakes, scanned the sky-line on the 
distant sea. He had watched the rosy streaks of 
the sunrise, and the glowing beauty of the golden 
sunset. He had followed the play of the light- 
ning-flash and heard the thunder roar. He had 
looked with joy as the outburst of spring grew 
into the rich luxuriance of summer, and the mel- 
low ripening of autumn, and the chill of winter. 

173 



174 Christ the Apocalypse 

Every beast of the field, and bird of the air, and 
fish of the waters, he knew by name. Every flower 
and herb and tree were as old friends. He knew 
everything in that land, and everything linked his 
heart to that land with the tenderst of ties. He 
was born there. It was the land his Heavenly 
Father had given his race. It was a land flowing 
with milk and honey, and ought to have been, 
and would have been, but for sin. It was the 
land of his forefathers, of Abraham, and David, 
and Isaiah, and Elijah — a land with a history the 
most sacred and wonderful, and of historic scenes 
the most majestic and glorious. Its associations 
were the most transcendently interesting and in- 
structive of any land, and indeed of all other lands 
put together. 

Christ's patriotic love for Palestine is the 
Apocalypse of men's love for the country God has 
given them. His example is our command. The 
native land of most people on earth has enough 
of God's bounties to deserve their love. Some 
countries — many countries — overflow with an 
afiluence of the good things of God truly wonder- 
ful. Christ loved the people of Palestine. They 
were his brethren in the flesh, his neighbors, his 



Patriotism 175 

friends, his fellow-countrymen. Christ loved his 
countrymen for the good they had, and he loved 
them though they were not good. The people of 
Palestine were bad enough, but they were good 
compared with those of the heathen nations of 
the world. There was more light in one Jewish 
doctor of the law — and he was dark enough — 
than in all the philosophers of Greece and Rome; 
and there was more goodness in some of the 
Pharisees — and they were bad enough — than in 
the very best samples of manhood that the most 
enlightened heathenisms of the world could pro- 
duce. 

But Christ's patriotism was no mere sentiment. 
It was a passion to uplift the people into a hap- 
pier, better state. He was full of reforms — pa- 
triotic reforms. He aimed, and labored hard, and 
died willingly, to deliver his country from its 
oppressions, its snares, its vices, its ruinous evil. 
He saw that a complete national regeneration 
must take place, and he devoted himself to that 
with all his might. 

He is no patriot who sees his country bleeding 
under the iron domination of wrongs and does 
nothing to deliver it. So far as men listened to 



176 Christ the Apocalypse 

Jesus, in so far their citizenship began to im- 
prove. If all men had listened to him, the his- 
tory of Palestine, and of the Jews, and of the 
world, would have been vastly different ever since. 
Christ's patriotism was national, and it was inter- 
national as well. He did not hate all other na- 
tions because he loved his own. But because he 
loved his own, he respected and loved all others 
too. The right sort of love hates nothing good. 
Its exercise towards one good thing opens its heart 
towards all good things. The man who loves his 
wife does not necessarily hate all other women, 
but he does necessarily respect and cherish very 
kindly feelings towards all other women. The 
more truly we love our next-door neighbor, the 
more truly we are likely to love all our neighbors, 
far and near. 

Christ had for neighbors Romans and Greeks, 
Syrians and Egyptians, and black people from dif- 
ferent provinces of Africa. The cosmopolitan 
visitors in Palestine in his day are recounted at 
Pentecost. Christ mingled with all these, more 
or less, all his life. But he was always courteous, 
considerate, kind. He treated all men as he de- 
sired they should treat him. That was his prac- 



Patriotism 177 

tice, as well as his precept. That is the only proper 
foundation for international relations. Nothing 
stirred the Jews' wrath like the international 
spirit of Christianity. They could not endure its 
brotherly attitude towards all other nations as 
well as their own. Because Jesus would not teach 
nor practice anything else, they cried out, "Away 
with him !" That is the spirit of self — of self de- 
veloped into diabolical viciousness. But that spirit 
stung themselves to death, as it always will do. 
International comity based on Christ's Golden 
Rule is the only sort that will pay men to prac- 
tice. It is far better for neighbors to live in 
peace with each other, and for national neighbors 
to do the same. They will gain nothing if they 
do not. 

"Render unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." 
Christ was no rebel leader of men. He did not 
head a violent revolutionary movement for the 
overthrow of the Roman Government, nor that of 
the Jewish Sanhedrin either. He taught and prac- 
ticed obedience to both. Caesar had his rights, and 
they must be respected. The State had its rights, 

and they must be respected. The Roman Govern- 
12 



178 Christ the Apocalypse 

ment was much better than none. Any govern- 
ment, as a rule, is better than none. State rights, 
within their legitimate sphere, are Divine rights. 
They are "powers ordained of God, and whoso- 
ever resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance 
of God, and they that resist shall receive to them- 
selves damnation." 

But Christ's words to these Jews are revolu- 
tionary at the same time — the most so of any- 
thing man ever uttered. They contain every es- 
sential element of righteous opposition to genuine 
despotism, the virile seed of all freedom under 
any government in all time. Christ here de- 
limits State rights and debars the State forever 
from transgressing these limits. He delimits hu- 
man obedience to the State, and forever forbids 
the transgression of those limits for any cause 
whatever. Christ admitted Caesar's right of taxa- 
tion, and practised it himself. He called a Roman 
tax collector to be one of his apostles, and always 
defended the rights of the publicans. And that 
principle of taxation suggests at least, if it does not 
include, all other State rights. If a man pays taxes, 
he acknowledges the mastery of the State over hirri 
as a citizen ; that it can make laws he ought to re- 



Patriotism 179 

spect and obey ; that it can and ought to protect 
him in his citizenship ; and that it has a right to his 
confidence and loyal support. 

But God has his rights as well as the State, 
and we must render to God the things that are 
God's. One of these is, that no man shall rob 
his brother of any of his birthright privileges as 
a son of God. The State commits that robbery 
when it commands men to believe religious dog- 
mas which itself has formulated, imposes forms 
of worship itself has devised, assumes a spiritual 
dictatorship over the conscience, and limits the 
free moral choice of the human will in the domain 
of religion, where God has given the largest lib- 
erty. There are essential civil rights, as well as 
religious, which are inherent in human nature by 
the command of God himself, which it is the busi- 
ness of the State to respect, but which it has no 
legitimate authority to take away. Those rights 
are largely found in the Magna Charta of British 
freedom, and especially in the enlarged and im- 
proved forms they have taken on in modern times, 
both in Great Britain and the United States. 
Christ sums them all up in the command, "Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," and in his 



i8o Christ the Apocalypse 

universal law, "Whatsoever ye would that men 
should do to you, do ye even so to them.'* 

If men adhere in strict obedience to these po- 
litical laws of Christ there will be no tyranny in 
the State, nor slavish toleration of it in the indi- 
vidual. There will be the largest political free- 
dom, because men will demand, obtain, and keep 
it. Within these limits men may hold what po- 
litical principles they please, and practice them 
as well. They may form what political parties 
they please. But neither their principles nor their 
party government will infringe on the rights of 
their fellow-men, nor of God. And there will be 
no political corruption, no degradation of the 
franchise, none of the abominations of civic and 
national misgovernment. There will be honesty, 
square dealing, justice, and purity in all depart- 
ments of politics, and there will be no conflict be- 
tween Church and State. Christ's principle here 
separates and unites Church and State. They are 
separated, each unto its own proper sphere; they 
are united in their joint usefulness to the com- 
monwealth. 

Every political evil can be traced to men's de- 
parture from Christ's law. All hostility between 



Patriotism 1 8 1 

Church and State is traceable to the same cause. 
The correction of any political abuse is a return 
so far to Christ's law. Every satisfactory adjust- 
ment of the Church and State is based on the same 
principle. Clean, pure politics means vivid ap- 
prehension, earnest execution of the cosmopolitan 
precept, ''Render unto Csesar the things that are 
Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." 



CHAPTER VI 
RENAISSANCE 

"/^^AN ye not discern the signs of the times?" 
^-^ Christ is the Apocalypse of every renais- 
sance, of the sloughing off of effete conditions 
and the upspringing of new impulses towards 
better things. 

The world had become old in Christ's time. 
Its systems and things were senile and worn-out. 
Men felt the need of a new and better order of 
things everywhere. Christ was the Renaissance 
of those better things. In political freedom, in 
social regeneration, in intellectual enfranchise- 
ment, in religious life that met the hungry cry 
of the soul, in almost everything, the dead past 
w^as ready to bury its dead, and to begin a new 
and better life. 

It was in the fullness of such a time Christ 

came. And his coming broke away from the old 

and rotten moorings of the past and sailed out 
182 



Renaissance 183 

into a new world of progress. Every fresh ad- 
vent of Christ in the operations of the Holy Spirit 
does the same thing. The worshiper of the dead 
past, represented by the blind and obstinate doc- 
tors of the law, stemmed the rising tide in vain. 
All Palestine took on a new life, and all Western 
Asia, and Northern Africa, and Eastern Europe. 
Before Christ ascended to the skies, its triumphal 
inauguration was spreading with irresistible 
might, and ere that generation had passed away 
it had stirred the known world as nothing ever 
before had in the history of mankind. 

''The truth shall make you free," said Christ. 
The Christ freedom is no onesided thing, no 
more than his religion is a onesided thing. It 
takes in all sides. Christ never intended his free- 
men to be political slaves; and from his day to 
ours that has been the strong passion of the Chris- 
tian heart. It was this Christian instinct that 
took root in the wild spirits of Germany, and 
helped them to tear the Roman empire of tyranny 
to pieces. It was this instinct that ruled the great 
soul of Charlemagne, and never utterly died out 
amid all the gloom and confusion of the Dark 
and Middle Ages. It was this spirit that reared 



184 Christ the Apocalypse 

the European States, which have more freedom 
than any other great States of all past history. 
It was this passionate love of freedom that shook 
the papal tyranny with such irresistible power in 
the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and 
from which it has never recovered, and never will. 
It was this deathless love of freedom that raised 
up Wickliffe and Knox, Zwingle and Luther. 
This was the spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers, of the 
Huguenots, of the Waldenses, of the Vaudois. 
It was this that founded British and American 
freedom. This was the spirit of Cromwell, of 
Blake, of King William of Orange, of Washing- 
ton. And this is pre-eminently the spirit of our 
own times, of the Victorian Ages of Britain, and 
of American expansion in the United States. 

This is one of the most significant signs of 
our own age — this universal demand for free- 
dom. The world is like a seething mass. In Con- 
tinental Europe, in the far East, in the oldest civ- 
ilizations, in the darkest regions where there is 
little or no civilization — everywhere, men call 
loudly for freedom; not license, but liberty. It 
is the Christ-thought, the Christ-impulse, that 
stirs within them, whether they know it or not, 



Renaissance 185 

whether they acknowledge it or not. It is the 
Christ-truth alone that can make them free. It 
is that men shall treat each other as brothers ; as 
they would that others treat them. This will 
bring political and religious freedom anywhere, 
everywhere; and without, nowhere. 

The spirit of discovery, invention, enterprise, 
was one of the signs of the times of Christ. The 
spirit of inquiry is better than any invention, be- 
cause it is the original of all invention. ^'Search 
and see," said Christ; that is, literally, explore 
and discover. Exploring the Bible never ends 
there. It is not in its nature that it can. Bible- 
exploration leads to all sorts of legitimate explora- 
tion, and indeed necessitates it; and Christ in- 
tended that it should. The Bible is a connecting 
link between matter and mind, man and the uni- 
verse, man and man, man and God. It joins man 
to everything good, and everything good to man. 
And it stimulates him to search out all his rela- 
tionships in this world and the next, and to pos^ 
sess and enjoy them all. Christianity rouses him 
to do this as nothing else ever did, or ever can. 

Christianity is the mother of inventions. The 
first Christian preachers were itinerants, ex- 



I 86 Christ the Apocalypse 

plorers, discoverers. The first Christian people 
were the same. They went everywhere proclaim- 
ing Christ, and to do this they had to penetrate 
the wild mountain recesses of Asia Minor, to cross 
the seas to Europe, to traverse whole continents 
and islands, to search out people and tribes and 
places most remote. The Christian missionary 
has always been a pioneer — a traveler. It was 
the missionary idea that prompted and sustained 
Columbus ; that largely ruled the chief American 
explorers; that has in our day recovered Africa 
from its place as the unknown Continent; that 
has revealed the grandeur of Australasia, China, 
and many other important portions of the earth. 
Christianity in its missionary operations has 
been no small inventor. Languages have been 
reduced to grammatical forms, or, indeed, almost 
created. Arts have been introduced, or modified, 
or made. A civilization unique in its character 
and adaptation to many nations has been called 
into existence, as admirable as it has been multi- 
form. Christianity has, besides its religious mis- 
sionaries, its political missionaries, its scientific 
missionaries, its commercial missionaries, its edu- 
cational missionaries, its mechanical missionaries, 



Renaissance 187 

and all these are inventors, discoverers, as well. 
No man can find out anything anywhere but he 
is one of God's inventors, discoverers, and mis- 
sionaries, to tell the good news to the rest of the 
world. 

"Greater things," said Christ, "than these 
shall ye do because I go to my Father." Christ's 
miracles were stupendous evidence and manifesta- 
tions of Divine power. But they ' were human 
miracles, too, as they were wrought by the hand 
of man. Were not those miracles hints of what 
man might do, aided, as he must always be, by 
Divine help? Did not Christ suggest, if not 
command men, by these miracles, to enlarge the 
scope of their faith in human possibilities, and 
to an almost unlimited degree? Is there not a 
sense in which all he did, we can do, within the 
limits of finite beings ? And are not those mira- 
cles of Christ but hints of even larger and more 
wonderful human possibilities than even they 
themselves represented ? 

"Greater things shall ye do." Greater moral 
miracles were wrought, as on the Day of Pente- 
cost and on a thousand Pentecostal days since 
then. But Christ's teaching included more than 



1 88 Christ the Apocalypse 

morals; or, rather, the Christ-morals included 
everything human. All human possibilities — are 
they not wrapt up in those greater things Christ 
spoke of ? All inventions, all arts, all science, all 
discoveries, all progress, as well as the Christ- 
religion, which includes them all, and every con- 
ceivable thing within human power? 

What incentives to human progress could be 
imagined equal to his? And what command 
could be so powerful? And have not men been 
in a degree obeying it? If Christ walked upon 
the water, is not the iron steamship that treads 
the ocean almost a more wonderful miracle? If 
Christ in a few moments reached the other shore 
of Gennesaret, and men asked in amazement how 
he came hither, is it not almost a still more won- 
derful thing, the passage through the ocean of 
a message in a few seconds of time? 

But Christ's "greater things" included things 
that men have not yet dared to dream of, much 
less to attempt with all the boldness of modern 
enterprise. We only begin to see something of 
the great possibilities that are within our reach, 
and to realize a few of the wonders of human 
progress. Some of the "greater things" we now 



Renaissance 189 

possess would have been undoubted impossibilities 
of our forefathers. Some of the ''greater things" 
of our descendants would appear to us undoubted 
impossibilities now. 

But the world moves, for Christ pushes it 
along ; and it will move faster in the ages to come, 
for the Christ-power does not get less, but more, 
continually. 



CHAPTER VII 
LITERATURE AND THE PRESS 

/^^ HRIST is the Apocalypse of literature and 
^-^ the press. The spoken words of Jesus were 
printed by his command. He committed them 
to the immortal custody of the press. Four re- 
porters took down what he said, and described 
what he did. They did their work so faithfully 
that they all perfectly agree, though each wrote 
in his own way. It is a pretty true report when 
four independent reporters relate precisely the 
same thing. ^'What thou seest, write in a book," 
was Christ's command to John in Patmos, and 
to all the writers of the New Testament. "Put 
it in print;" for it is printing, all the same, 
whether by hand as of old, or by machinery and 
type as we do now. "Blessed is he that readeth." 
Christ put his royal stamp of approval on reading 
what is written. He ordered printing, and blessed 

the reading of it. That is his attitude towards 
190 



Literature and the Press 191 

the press. The New Testament Hterature, under 
the sanction and authority of Jesus, must be al- 
lowed to include its full significance. It must 
have appeared to Christ the very best thing to do, 
or he would have adopted some other and better 
way of preserving and propagating his truth. The 
Old Testament was in the form of a book. That 
book was often in Christ's hands. When he got 
up to read the Scripture lesson in the synagogue 
of Nazareth, he turned readily to the passage he 
wanted to read. It was not the first time he had 
read that passage. He could have found just as 
readily any other passage in that book, because 
he was quite familiar with its whole contents. 

After his resurrection, Christ said to his won- 
dering disciples, ''These are the words which I 
spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all 
things must be fulfilled which were written in 
the Law^ of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in 
the Psalms, concerning me;" that is, in the whole 
Old Testament Scriptures. He had studied it 
all over and over. That is what he requires all 
his followers to do, as far as possible. 

It is no misnomer to call the Holy Scriptures 
"the Book;" pre-eminently the Book; the Book 



192 Christ the Apocalypse 

of books; the Seed-book of books. If you oblit- 
erate all Bible truth from literature, how much of 
literature will remain? Even false teaching is 
the shading of Bible truth. It is the falsehood 
Satan plants alongside the truth to counteract 
and destroy it. 

What is literature? It is truth revealed, un- 
folded, illustrated, and fixed in the lasting grip 
of the press, where it can continue to do good; 
or it is falsehood revealed, unfolded, illustrated, 
and fixed in the lasting grip of the press, where 
it can continue to do evil. Literature is either 
an angel or a devil, according to its character. 
Bad literature has come as Satan came, turning 
a good angel into a bad ; and all bad literature be- 
longs where Satan belongs — perdition. 

It took fifteen hundred years to write the Bible. 
It may take fifteen thousand years to write all the 
human bibles which will spring from God's Bible, 
the first parent of them all. 

Christ said, ''I am the truth." So whatever 
truth there is in the world is his truth. There 
is truth in the Shasters of Zendavesta, in the 
teachings of Confucius, in the Koran of Moham- 
med, as well as in the mythologies of ancient 



Literature and the Press 193 

Greece and Rome. Some rays from the Sun of 
righteousness illumine these dark scriptures of 
men, and the philosophy and ethics of those 
heathen or semi-heathen nations interweave what- 
ever truth they had into their literature. 

The literature of all nations has sprung from 
their religion, whatever it was, and the Christ- 
truth in their systems, whatever it may have been, 
has been the fountain-head of all their literary 
genius. Take out the true ethics and true phi- 
losophy from the classics of Greece and Rome, 
China and Japan, the Sanscrit of India, the Koran 
of Mohammed, from any and every literature in 
non-Christian lands, and how much that is worth 
anything is left? 

Christ is the measure of the Bible, but the 
Bible is not the measure of Christ. The Bible has 
nothing more in it than Christ, but Christ has 
more in him than the Bible. As the genesis of 
all literature has been religion, or rather the 
Christ-truth contained in it, so the genesis of all 
Christian literature, both of the Old Testament 
and the New, is the Christ-truth. Christ's com- 
mand to "write" was what God himself had done 
on Sinai, as he wrote the Decalogue on the tables 
13 



194 Christ the Apocalypse 

of stone. The penman Moses was the Divinely- 
appointed prototype of all succeeding sacred pen- 
men, and of all Christian penmen to the end of 
time. 

Christianity has stamped literature with im- 
measurable importance. It has done this by 
enshrining itself in the written page and chal- 
lenging all the world to read. The Bible as a liter- 
ature has intrenched itself in the human soul as 
nothing literary ever did. For the most exquisite 
poetry, the most gorgeous imagery, the sublimest 
eloquence, the most thrilling pathos ; for the most 
vivid word-painting, the noblest sentiment, the 
deepest philosophy, the most unlimited sugges- 
tiveness, the widest sweep; for the completest 
satiation of soul-hunger, the most cosmopolitan 
adaptation to all states and conditions, circum- 
stances and places, for all ages and sexes and 
peoples; for the most wonderful simplicity and 
the most awe-inspiring complexity ; for its dealing 
with trifles of each day and the vast business of 
eternity; for its brevity, comprehensiveness, and 
pith ; for its eloquent silence on a thousand things ; 
for its variety, diversity, unity; for its motives 
sweet as honey and terrible as thunder; for its 



Literature and the Press 195 

calm surface and unfathomable depths ; in a word, 
for its Divinity, for it is Christ in speech, as far 
as Christ can there be presented to men. There 
is nothing like it in literature, nor ever v^ill be 
to the end of time. 

In the position of the Bible, the illustration, 
amplification, enforcement of its teaching, the pul- 
pit will be never done; and the greater pulpit, 
the press, will be never done, because its truths 
widen with the age and growth of human ideas, 
interests, and needs. Its themes are as inex- 
haustible as the passage of time and the proces- 
sion of the generations and the development of 
man. Its gold will never be all dug, its pearls 
all gathered, its force all spent, its light all turned 
out, until the trump of doom will sound the knell 
of time and the birthday of eternity. 

Christ is the Apocalypse of the press, and of 
the free press. ''Blessed is he that readeth." 
"Search the Scriptures;" first the root-Scriptures, 
the Bible; and then the more voluminous Bible, 
the whole range of literature, its legitimate, its 
necessary offspring. The opening of the one in- 
volves the opening of the other. Men can not 
but speak the things that they have seen and 



ig6 Christ the Apocalypse 

heard in God's Book, or in God's larger Book be- 
ing constantly written in the great world of hu- 
manity. Christ's life was one long battle for the 
right of speech. The Scribes and Pharisees were 
as intolerant censors of the press, written and 
spoken, as the world ever saw. They were writers 
by trade themselves, and claimed the utmost lib- 
erty to speak as oracles to their fellow-men. They 
allowed Napoleon's freedom — freedom to obey, 
to obey them — but the least outspoken opposition 
they could never endure. Without asking their 
leave, and in the face of their furious hostility, 
Christ spoke what he pleased. He affirmed the 
glorious right of the freest possible utterance for 
all men by exercising it himself. 

There never was — there never can be — a more 
perfect prototype of free speech than Jesus Christ. 
Discussion, free interchange of thought, honest 
criticism to any extent, the fullest possible inquiry, 
the largest exercise of human judgment on any 
and every subject within the range of human 
thought, — all this Christ continually preached and 
invited and challenged, and commanded men to 
practice for themselves; not as a favor from any 
man, but as a Divinely-bestowed right belonging 



Literature and the Press 197 

to every man. He himself was ready for such 
discussion with any one, from the high priest in 
the temple to the woman at Samaria's well. He 
never avoided it, nor crept out of it, nor weak- 
ened in it. He was willing to talk for hours, and 
begin again. He never stopped any man's mouth 
except when the man had nothing more to say. 
He answered every man's questions, until men 
had no more questions they had the face to ask. 
On any subject, civil, political, social, scientific, 
moral, spiritual, past, present, future, he was con- 
tinually listening, attentively and kindly, to what 
any one had to say, and freely expressing his own 
views. He did not order men to cease their talk, 
even when they talked nonsense; nor did he 
sternly command silence when men talked wicked- 
ness. He allowed sinners the freest speech as well 
as saints. He permitted people to make all sorts 
of criticisms on his sayings and actions, and to 
say all manner of unkind and untruthful things 
about him. He met their wicked statements with 
manly and dignified explanation or denial, or be- 
sought them, as people who should have some 
sense and decency, to change their opinions, and 
to change them for good cause. But he never laid 



198 Christ the Apocalypse 

the hand of censorship on one of them, to com- 
pel them to silence. Christ believed it was far 
better to allow men to speak freely, even if they 
spoke wickedly, than not to allow them to speak 
at all. 

What is the most powerful engine for the 
propagation of truth and righteousness in the 
world? Christ gives us the answer, — speech, 
spoken, written. All methods were at Christ's 
command; all human methods; all Divine meth- 
ods. We ourselves can readily think of many 
other ways of spreading the Christ-truth through- 
out the world, and Christ could have thought of 
a thousand ways to our one. But out of them all 
he chose this one, "Go ye into all the world, and 
preach" — teach, speak, write. Speech written and 
speech spoken are essentially one and the same 
thing. It looked almost like a mistake he had 
made in making this choice. It seemed so paltry 
a piece of business, merely to sit down and 
have a little talk with people. Christ's own talks 
seemed to the imperious masters of the Sanhedrin 
quite a ridiculous way of promoting any great 
scheme. And it simply raised a laugh of de- 



Literature and the Press 199 

rision when the haughty Roman and Greek 
sophists saw the Christian method of overthrow- 
ing their mighty fortresses of classic superstition. 
It was all a piece of foolishness in their opinion, 
which could never amount to anything. If it had 
been the marshaling of powerful armies, the sweep 
of battle and victory, the potency of some Alex- 
andrine or Caesarian propagandism, or the po- 
tency or wealth of learning or culture, or some 
new and overwhelming form of traditional aris- 
tocracy; but no — only talk! "Go and talk." 
Surely that was the climax of all weak instru- 
ments to do much in this rough world ! So men 
thought in Christ's day, and so multitudes have 
thought since then, and there are not wanting 
men who think so even to-day. 

But Christ was right. He did not overesti- 
mate the power of speech. He put it in the front 
rank, head and shoulders over all other agencies, 
as a power to revolutionize the world. Time has 
justified him in this. It has taken nineteen hun- 
dred years to make it clear, and it may take nine- 
teen thousand more to develop fully Christ's 
wisdom in this choice. 



200 Christ the Apocalypse 

Speech, spoken, written, to-day is the mightiest 
power in the world. The pulpit, the platform, 
the book, the newspaper, — here is the ruler of 
rulers, the conqueror of conquerors, the em- 
peror of emperors, the governor of governments, 
the molder of destinies, the master of all masters, 
the hope of the world. 



CHAPTER VIII 
EDUCATION 

/^^HRIST is the Apocalypse of education. He 
^-^ reveals to us the best schools and school- 
masters in the world. Christ never condemned 
the great schools of learning, either heathen or 
Jewish, and what he did not condemn can not be 
condemned. Whatever was false and wrong in 
those centers of learning — and there was much — 
his teaching abundantly refutes. Whatever was 
true and right in them — and there was much — his 
teaching abundantly sustains and verifies. If it 
is true that Christ is the Fountain-head of all 
truth, and the mightiest of all inspirations to seek 
after truth and find it, and value it after it 
is found, — then Christ himself, in a very im- 
portant sense, is the Originator of every seat of 
learning worthy of the name in ancient or modern 
times. He chose, as his very chiefest apostle, a 
man who had been educated in some of the great- 

20I 



202 Christ the Apocalypse 

est universities in the world; a man who had 
learned in their midst about all they could teach 
or was worth knowing — the apostle Paul. That 
of itself is a good Christian indorsement, for all 
time, of universities and university learning. 

But Christ has discovered to men even nobler 
and better schools than these, and schools the 
full value of which men, even now, are only be- 
ginning to appreciate, and concerning which they 
have much yet to learn. Christ was self-taught. 
That meant that he used every available help to 
educate himself. The Jews marveled, saying, 
"How knoweth this man letters, having never 
learned?" But Jesus had learned. He had trav- 
eled no royal road to learning, but the old beaten 
path. He had used all the teachers and schools 
and colleges within his reach. The New Testa- 
ment says little of his childhood, youth, and early 
manhood. But its hints are enough. As a boy 
of twelve he gravitated as naturally to the learned 
professoriate of the Sanhedrin as the needle to 
the pole. The Jewish University had a thousand- 
fold more attractions for him at that early age 
than all the strange sights and sounds of the 
great city of Jerusalem. That that boy learned 



Education 203 

from all the teachers and schools of Nazareth 
what knowledge they could impart we may well 
believe. And that every human being he met was 
pressed into service as a teacher in some sort, we 
may well believe, too. 

It is said that the mastery of a few classic 
works is one of the highest and most valuable 
achievements of perfected literary scholarship. 
Jesus Christ had mastered a whole library of 
classic authors, the greatest of all classics, the Old 
Testament. His mastery of that wonderful lit- 
erature was equaled by no man in Palestine. The 
most erudite scholars, whether priests or scribes 
or doctors of the law, made that discovery, and 
"durst ask him no more questions." 

Christ put himself to school in the great uni- 
versity of nature. He studied nature in all its 
moods and tenses and conjugations. Its laws and 
ever-varying forms and infinitude of beauties; its 
things animate and inanimate; its hidden mys- 
teries and open secrets, — all were full of instruc- 
tion. He found plenty of "sermons in stones," 
and in every object that met his eye, from the 
tiniest insect to the most ponderous star. Every- 
thing to him had its lesson of truth, its voice of 



204 Christ the Apocalypse 

teaching. All nature was full of philosophy, deep, 
comprehensive, prophetic, and true as God, its 
Author. And Jesus studied hard in the still 
greater university of man. "He knew all men, 
and needed not that any should testify of man, 
for he knew what was in man." This of itself 
sweeps the whole field of psychology, mental and 
moral philosophy, logic, and metaphysics, — a vast 
section of the most profound and interesting por- 
tions of human knowledge. 

The logic of Jesus was inexorable. If it did 
not convince men, then no logic can. His speech 
was the concentration of argumentative truth, as 
clear and cogent as it was self-demonstrating and 
unanswerable. He had trained his mind to think, 
and was ready for the sharpest encounters with 
the brightest men of genius of his day. 

And Christ was a poet. His parables are 
poems in real life. And so full was his mind of 
this favorite form of poetic speech that "without 
a parable spake he not to the multitude." He 
had cultivated this highest of all human arts so 
that his words were blossoms of truth and beauty, 
and his very silence wore the golden coronal of 
poetic majesty as much as his speech. 



Education 205 

Jesus had found instructors and instruction 
everywhere, but his best master of all was him- 
self. He had gathered knowledge wherever there 
was any to be gathered, but he molded it in the 
matrix of his own mind. He shaped it as the 
master potter does the clay, according to the 
genius of his own thought, and at the command 
of his own will. His perfection of culture came 
from within and was an individual autonomy, 
not an outward accretion. He developed a man- 
hood entirely his own, and stamped with the im- 
press of a glorious, self-contained personality. 
Christ educated himself on all lines and on all 
lines proportionate to each other. He had no 
hobbies, nor mental monstrosities, nor abnormal 
developments. 

Christ took great care of physical culture. He 
educated his body. No man ever better observed 
the best laws of hygiene than he. Temperance 
and exercise and the due requirements of nature 
were strictly attended to. He believed in physical 
labor and in skilled labor. There is little doubt 
that for years he worked at the carpenter's trade ; 
and as Jesus did nothing by halves, so he wrought 
at the carpenter's bench not by halves. We may 



2o6 Christ the Apocalypse 

well believe that there was no better carpenter 
in Nazareth, nor in all Galilee, than he. His 
physical toil took another form when he left the 
carpenter's bench to preach. His muscular frame 
found congenial and healthy exercise in travers- 
ing on foot the whole length and breadth of his 
native land and beyond, and which he kept up to 
the very last days of his life. 

But Christ had no idea of an education that 
stopped short of its crowning glory and of what 
alone could give coherence and unity and strength 
to all the rest — religion. He did not cultivate 
to the utmost his lower nature, the physical and 
mental, and leave untouched the higher, the moral 
and spiritual. Nor was he at all afraid that the 
highest culture of the latter would in any way 
damage in the least the highest culture of the 
former. Each in its own order, — God and the 
immortal interests of the soul first, and afterwards 
all other interests. 

In this education Christ combined the most 
perfect harmony, unity, and beauty and strength, 
and he put on the top stone, "All for the glory 
of God," with a shout of joy which lasted all 
through his mortal career. Is not this true edu- 



Education 207 

cation for all men and for all ages? On vvhat 
better educational lines can we proceed to-day 
than on these, and such as these, which the life 
of Christ discloses? Schools, colleges, universi- 
ties — yes, assuredly; and the very best that can 
be instituted, and equipped, and maintained; but 
only to help us to help ourselves as indeed their 
very best, if not their only object. Mental cul- 
ture on the broadest and most comprehensive and 
most thorough lines, but not at the expense of the 
body, nor in depreciation of the body, nor in de- 
preciation of the skilled labor of the body. 

Why should not every educated man and 
woman be taught a trade or handicraft as an es- 
sential part of their education? And on what 
principle should any man or woman be entitled 
to be regarded as an educated person who lacks 
that essential qualification? Is not any educa- 
tion as abstract as it is mischievous that has a 
tendency directly or indirectly to despise manual 
labor and skilled handicraft? 

Certainly, if we read Christ's ideas of educa- 
tion aright, all education without religion is edu- 
cation with its most valuable part left out, or, 
rather, it is no education at all. Education with- 



2o8 Christ the Apocalypse 

out religion is as possible as sunlight without il- 
lumination and warmth. Christ shows men what 
all education is for — a means to an end ; that end 
is to glorify God. If we leave out that ultimate 
object, then education has no object, and is there- 
fore worth nothing. 

These are lessons the world has not yet 
learned, except but in partial degree, and it will 
take the world a good w^hile yet to come to learn 
them well. Nor will the world ever reach the 
lofty heights of the noblest education until men 
do learn well and practice fully these lessons, and 
such as these, from Christ, the great Teacher. 

''Suffer the little children to come unto me, 
and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom 
of heaven." That is the relation of childhood 
and youth to education, and that is the relation 
also of the parent, the Church, and the State to 
the education of the young. The disciples to 
whom Christ spoke these words were not the only 
ones who imagined that their little children were 
too young to begin their Christian education. 
The same error has existed in one form or an- 
other ever since, and exists to-day among many. 
A child is never too young to begin its Christian 



Education 209 

education. Christ taught that on this occasion, 
and that is the only sound philosophy as regards 
the education of a child, using that term m its 
very widest sense. The moment a child is born 
into the world it begins to learn, it is capable of 
learning, and should be taught from that hour. 
The latest advance in modern scientific educa- 
tion — namely, the kindergarten system — is based 
on this fact, and is only a step towards the reali- 
zation of Christ's idea, as contained in these words 
to his disciples. 

To bring a child to Christ is to begin its edu- 
cation, and includes education complete, physical, 
mental, moral, and spiritual; for there is no such 
thing as complete education that does not include 
all these. All these begin, or should begin, as 
soon as the child comes into the world. Christ 
did not rebuke these mothers for bringing these 
children — and some of them very young — to him. 
Had he rebuked them at all, it might have been 
for not bringing them before. He maintains this 
right to do it now, no matter how young any of 
them are ; and that means their right to do it any 
time after they are born into the world. There 
are no reasons psychological, physical, or circum- 
14 



2IO Christ the Apocalypse 

stantial or moral, that can successfully set aside 
the possibility and necessity of this education, 
which runs parallel simply with human existence 
itself. If men have not yet learned how to do 
this in the very earliest stages of infantile ex- 
istence, they must set about it to learn as fast and 
as well as they can. 

Christ's words conveyed a rebuke to the dis- 
ciples, but a commendation to the mothers, and a 
command as well. He here enthroned the mother 
as a teacher of her children, as its first and the 
very best of all teachers. From the natural in- 
stincts of affection, from the promptings of intel- 
ligent conception of duty, from the high impulse 
of moral and spiritual motive, these mothers 
brought their children to Jesus; and Christ's ut- 
terance speaks to all mothers, and fathers, too, 
to go and do likewise. Every father and mother 
is, by Divine right and in coequal responsibility, 
the prophet, priest, and sovereign of the home. 
To train up their children in the way in which 
they should go is the all-comprehending function 
of the parental relation. That means the protec- 
tion, instruction, guidance, development of all 
the mental, moral, and spiritual powers of their 



Education 2 1 1 

nature to the fullest extent, and from the first 
moments of their existence. This is a responsi- 
bility which can not be transferred to another in- 
dividual or body of individuals; to neither the 
Church nor the State, nor any one. No other 
teacher can take a parent's place, especially a 
mother's place. Among all the forces that mold 
human character and shape human destiny there 
is nothing, next to God himself, so potent as a 
Christian mother's faithful teaching and ex- 
ample. 

These mothers brought their children to Jesus. 
In that, Jesus recognized the noblest function of 
motherhood, and stamped with an emphasis as 
indelible as it is universal the royal prerogative 
of every mother and the majestic power intrusted 
to her by the hand of God himself. The home is 
assuredly to be the grandest training-school of 
humanity — the first, the best, the noblest of all. 
But Christ teaches us that it is to have its supple- 
mentary and complementary help, the Church and 
the State. 

Christ's command, "Forbid them not; . . . 
suffer them to come unto me," was addressed to 
his disciples — that is, to the Church represented 



2 1 2 Christ the Apocalypse 

by these men — and the Church of all succeeding 
time. It is the business of the Church, and per- 
haps its most important business of all, to bring 
the children to Jesus, to educate them for God 
and heaven. That is a far more complex, diffi- 
cult, and various task than probably the Church 
has ever yet fully understood. With all the won- 
derful development of modern Sunday-school 
work — one of the ,most splendid moral achieve- 
ments of the nineteenth century — few intelligent 
Christians would presume to say that the limit of 
even Sunday-school training has been reached. 
Much less is it true that the whole question of 
what is included in the Christian training of the 
young by the Church of God has been fully in- 
vestigated and is being fully done; or, in other 
words, that we understand and are doing all that 
Christ meant in those profound words, ''F'orbid 
them not; . . . suffer them to come unto 
me." It may be that the Church of a hundred 
years to come may look back with amazement at 
our ignorance and utter insufficiency in this re- 
spect. 

But Christ's words have even a wider applica- 
tion still. They can not be confined to even the 



Education 213 

home and the Church, supreme as these are as 
the most important of all educators. They apply 
to the State as well. The State is the evolution 
of the home, and, in a sense, of the Church too; 
at least all the essential principles which enter into 
good home government and good Church gov- 
ernment are found in good State government as 
well. There can be no good State government 
without law and recognized authority, without 
justice, righteousness, and truth; that is to say, 
that the nearer a State government approaches 
to the ethics of the Ten Commandments, all 
summed up by Christ in a word — the love of God 
and our neighbor — the better that government is. 
The home, the Church, the State, are all equally 
based on these principles, and are all equally 
amenable to these principles. 

The home and the Church are Divinely-ap- 
pointed educators of the young; so is the State. 
Christ's command applied equally to it: "Forbid 
them not; . . . suffer them to come unto 
me." The State has no right to hinder the edu- 
cation of its children. That is readily admitted; 
and that at once recognizes its responsibility. The 
State exists solely for the good of the people, and 



214 Christ the Apocalypse 

as ^*the soul to be without knowledge is not good," 
so it is not good for the children of a State to 
grow up in ignorance. It is the duty of the State 
to see that every bar to the education of its chil- 
dren is fully removed, and to see to it with the 
utmost care and zeal and earnestness. If it does 
that, it will go a long way towards obeying 
Christ's command. 

But it has its own educational work, too, in 
suffering the children and youth to "come to 
Jesus." Every well-regulated and truly Christian 
State can do much educationally in bringing its 
youth to Christ, and that without trenching in 
the least on the specific duties of either home or 
the Church. The State can not give a secular 
education pure and simple, for the very good 
reason that there is no such thing. The ethics 
of Christianity are inwrought into the very warp 
and woof of every branch of learning taught in 
our schools, colleges, and universities, and per- 
meate the entire structure throughout. 

If you banish the idea of God and Church, 
of right and wrong, according to Christian stand- 
ards, from any branch of instruction, you will 
have nothing but chaos left. Whether the Chris- 



Education 2 1 5 

tian ethics are openly acknowledged or tacitly im- 
plied, it makes no difference; they are there all 
the same. You can not but teach God in it all, 
either expressed or by implication, if you would 
teach intelligently and intelligibly. It is a neces- 
sity in the nature of the case. The question for 
the State to decide is not how to banish God from 
its teaching — for that it can never do — but how 
to teach the Christ-truth in such simple form that 
it will not include the special hobbies or denomina- 
tional peculiarities of any one branch of the 
Church or of any one individual or set of in- 
dividuals. It is not the business of the State to 
do the latter in any form or manner or degree. 

Christ allows the very largest liberty to men to 
think for themselves in religious matters, and a 
free State should allow that too; but that very 
liberty imposes an obligation upon all men to per- 
mit the same liberty to all others. A Church has 
a perfect right to believe what it judges to be the 
truth, and to have its children taught accordingly, 
and taught for that part in the public schools, if 
it so requires; that is, its own children, but not 
other people's children. When a Church demands 
that the public school shall be turned into a ve- 



21 6 Christ the Apocalypse 

hide for propagating its special peculiarities, and 
at the public expense, then liberty ends and 
tyranny begins. 

If the Church wants its children in the public 
school taught on denominational lines, it is un- 
doubtedly within its rights, but at such times as 
the State and it may agree upon, and only by its 
own clergy and only to its own children. No 
man, nor body of men, nor ecclesiastical body, 
has a right to force their religious views upon 
the young or upon any one, and especially by law, 
and at the public expense. Such a thing is as 
antichristian as it is vicious, and as utterly foreign 
to true liberty as it is certain of failure. The 
narrow and unchristian bigotry that would com- 
pel all children and youth to be taught in the 
groove of a single denominationalism is one ex- 
treme ; but there is another, and that is to attempt 
to banish all distinctive Christian instruction from 
our schools and eliminate, as far as possible, all 
reference to the Divine claims of the Almighty 
pn the children of men. 

There are two dangers — the Charybdis and 
the Scylla — confronting the educational problem 
of to-day. There is nothing but destruction in 



Education 217 

either. Christ steers us clear of both. The home 
and the Church must not disobey Christ's com- 
mand, ''Forbid them not; . . . suffer them 
to come unto me;" neither must the State. Each 
in its own sphere, but each faithful in that sphere. 
It is as sacred a duty for the State to honor God 
and in its own way help its youth towards a Chris- 
tian character and life, as it is that of either the 
home or the Church. There is plenty of essential 
Christian truth concerning which nearly all men 
are agreed. The State need not forbid the teach- 
ing of that ; nor should it, to please an individual 
here or there. Nor will it gain in the least if it 
does. The attempt to eradicate all Christian 
teaching from our school text-books is as absurd 
and impossible as it is most injurious and even 
fatal to the best interests of the State. That at- 
tempt is simply doing what Christ has declared 
should not be done, ''Forbid them not;" and the 
State that does it will infallibly suffer in the end. 
Not much is said of the childhood and youth 
of Jesus. But there is enough to reveal his filial 
character and what all children should be to their 
parents. He was "subject" to his father and 
mother. It was a willing, intelligent, and noble 



21 8 Christ the Apocalypse 

subjection. At twelve the boy Jesus had learned 
a great deal. The wonderful scenes connected 
with his birth, the trials at Bethlehem, the perilous 
escape from Herod's bloody sword, had doubtless 
all made a deep impression on his mind. He had 
seen and shared in the struggles with poverty and 
obscurity and hard toil in Nazareth. He could 
remember well whole years of tenderest care, of 
self-sacrifice, of warm love, in the parental home. 
Already his mother had become to him the dearest 
of all earthly friends, the most precious of all hu- 
man beings. Filial reverence filled his soul, 
glanced from his eye, intoned his speech, marked 
all his behavior towards his parents. Gratitude 
to God for such a mother and such a father welled 
up within him as a perennial spring, and found 
practical expression in his willing help rendered 
to the extent of his ability. We can well believe 
that that mother's heart was many a time light- 
ened of its great burdens by his manly, ever- 
timely, and earnest sympathies of heart and word 
and deed. 

One scene floods with light the loving care he 
had for his mother. Looking down from his 
cross, he saw her standing near. Alone in the 



Education 219 

world — as it is almost certain she was — weary, 
worn, heart-broken, poor, and feeble, he seemed 
to forget for the time his own terrible agonies 
in the thought of providing for her. With a look 
of tenderness which neither John nor Mar}^ ever 
could forget he said, '*Woman, behold thy son;" 
''John, behold thy mother;" and from that hour 
John took her to his own home. This is the 
world's lesson of filial duty. This is the highest 
expression of what God meant when he com- 
manded, "Honor thy father and thy mother, that 
thy days may be long upon the land which the 
Lord thy God giveth thee." It is the noble son 
that makes the noble man. It is the noble daugh- 
ter that makes the noble woman. 

Nothing in all the education of youth ; nothing 
in all its preparation for citizenship, for life's re- 
sponsibilities in the home, the Church, the State; 
nothing in all the elements of human character 
that conspire to the highest order of human dig- 
nity, honor, and success; nothing that makes for 
righteousness on earth and eternal safety in the 
world to come, can surpass this Christly filial love, 
devotion, and duty. 



CHAPTER IX 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

OCIENCE and religion are not two things, but 
^^ one. Christ has joined them in holy matri- 
mony, and he is the Apocalypse of that union. 
Science can make no discoveries anywhere except 
in the domain of God's works and ways, because 
there are no other domains to make any discov- 
eries in. 

''All things were made by him [Christ], and 
without him was not anything made that was 
made. All things were made by him, and for 
him, and by him all things consist." There can 
be no hostlity between science and religion. There 
never has been; there never will be. There may 
be a hostility between a science which has a little 
knowledge and a vast amount of incredulity, or 
rather credulity, conceit, and presumption, and a 
religion which is true ; or there may be a hostility 
between a true and noble-spirited and enlightened 



Science and Religion 221 

science and a weak and imperfect or false re- 
ligion; but no other sort of collision is possible. 
When men know more of the Christ-meaning 
of the Scriptures, they will stop talking or even 
thinking about any possible danger to Christian- 
ity in any amount of scientific discovery. They 
will hail every new discovery as a fresh revela- 
tion of Christ's glory, as it certainly will be, and 
long for more. And when men get out of the 
babyhood of science — where they still are — and 
know something of it as men, they will cease 
imagining that they are going to hit on something 
derogatory to God and injurious to Christianity. 
They will gladly see that it is Christ they are 
studying all the time. 



CHAPTER X 
HUMAN RELIGION AND DIVINE 

/^"^HRIST is the Apocalypse of Divine religion 
^^ as opposed to human religion. Infidelity is 
not the normal condition of man. It is his na- 
ture to believe in something ; it is almost his neces- 
sity that he should. Temptation assaults the hu- 
man soul, not so much with negations as with 
false beliefs. The world is full of religion; but 
there are two sorts — the false and the true, the 
human and the Divine. Christ reveals to us both 
for our guidance and warning for all ages and 
generations of men. 

Christ's life was one long battle for Divine 
religion as opposed to the human sort. Judaism, 
in all its essentials, was Divine. Christ had no 
battle with essential Judaism. He came not to 
destroy the law, but to fulfill it. But it was hu- 
man Judaism he fought. The Jew was not satis- 
fied with his reHgion as God made it. He fash- 



Human Religion and Divine 223 

ioned it to suit himself. Ages of this human 
manifestation had left Judaism a form of godli- 
ness, but denying the power thereof. For doc- 
trines, it taught the commandments of men. The 
spirit was lost in the letter, and the spiritual in 
the carnal. 

The Judaism of Christ's day is the prototype 
of every false and formal religion in the world 
to-day. As Judaism had become the very em- 
bodiment of human religion, so the Pharisee was 
the embodiment of Judaism. All human religions 
exalt man, and especially the priestly man. The 
proud and powerful Pharisee is reproduced in the 
lordly spiritual magnates whose decrees shake 
whole kingdoms with terror. Human religion, 
as far as it can, clothes itself with all the attrac- 
tions the world can produce. It is essentially of 
the earth, earthy. Christ's religion humbles man, 
and keeps him humble. Its greatest magnates are 
its greatest servants of man. Its highest glories 
shine brightest within, and their most refulgent 
rays are those that come upon the world through 
self-sacrifice. Christianity has no priest but 
Christ, its great High Priest, who once in the 
end of the world appeared to put away sin by the 



n 



224 Christ the Apocalypse 

sacrifice of himself. Christianity has no priest- 
hood except that which takes in every behever: 
*'A holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacri- 
fices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." 

The true Israelite to-day is the genuine Chris- 
tian. The genuine Christian is the only true 
Israelite. "If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abra- 
ham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." 
Every other religion but Christ's exalts form and 
ceremony and ritual. Men want a religion whose 
symbols they can see, a religion on a plane with 
their senses, and a religion whose exercise min- 
isters to sensuous gratification. If they can not 
get one of that kind, they set about making one. 
This is the chief characteristic of all heathen re- 
ligions and semi-heathen, great and small, ancient 
and modern, and it is the chief characteristic of 
all degenerate and distorted forms of Christian- 
ity. And nothing in the whole history of hu- 
manity has borne more vicious fruit. It nailed 
Christ to the cross. It has originated many of the 
blackest crimes that have disgraced human nature 
ever since ; and its ferocious cruelty can only be 
measured by the desperate tenacity with which it 
clings to error and lies. 



Human Religion and Divine 225 

Christ's tremendous impeachment of Jewish 
formahsm, pride, and self-aggrandizement is an 
impeachment of every form of human rehgion, 
and is wholly destructive of its very genius, meth- 
ods, and aims. It substantiates forever the only 
true religion in the world for all men and for all 
time; the lofty spiritualism, whose essence is in- 
ward and outward purity, whose life is the fullest 
love to God and man; whose aim is the glory of 
God in the highest ; whose end is the worthy com- 
panionship with the great God himself for ever- 
more. 



15 



CHAPTER XI 
SOCIABILITY 

XT OT the least of all the problems of sociology 
^ ^ is how men are to behave themselves 
tovx^ards their fellow-men in the thousand things 
in which they come in contact in every-day life. 
Christ is the Apocalypse of human sociability. 
"This man receiveth sinners and eateth with 
them." Yes, Christ knew how to associate with 
all men, and has shown us how. Christ did not 
think himself too good to associate with even sin- 
ful men. The ascetics of the Middle Ages had 
a different opinion, as they have now. They 
thought they could do better by keeping aloof 
from an ungodly world, and hiding away in se- 
clusion from their fellow-men. That idea has 
erected every monastery and nunnery in the 
world. The Romanists are not the only ones 
who think this. The Greek Church, the Mo- 
hammedans, the most, if not all, the great heathen 
226 



Sociability 227 

religions of the world, think the same thing. And 
multitudes of Protestant Christians are strongly 
tempted to think so too. 

But this was not Christ's principle nor prac- 
tice. He did not think it was derogatory to his 
dignity, nor his self-respect, nor his character, nor 
his purity, nor his Divine nature, to associate with 
even wicked men. He never drew off from them, 
saying, ^*Stand off; I am holier than thou." He 
never regarded them as beneath his notice and 
friendship, and even close association. He was 
quite willing to sit down with them, talk with 
them, eat with them, and be on good terms with 
them. He never considered it would do him the 
least harm, or injure his mission, or displease his 
Heavenly Father. He did it because it was right, 
and to teach us that it is right, and always right, 
for us to do the same thing. 

The world owes nothing to the secluded as- 
cetic, or at least, if such have done good, it was 
not their ascetic seclusion that did it. Because 
a man or a woman is bad, it is no reason we 
should stand off from them, but rather a reason 
why we should get nearer to them, and make them 
better. That is what Christ associated with sin- 



228 Christ the Apocalypse 

ners for. He never hurt himself by doing it, but 
he always helped them. Christianity does not 

J lift up one sinner out of the mire and clay of sin 
and place him on a pedestal of pride to look down 
on those who still flounder in the mud and filth 
of evil. It lifts them up that they may stand on 
firm ground, and reach down to help others up. 
Christ could not hide himself from those poor, 
sinful souls ; neither can we, if we are Christ's. 

^^^""^ Nor was Christ a patronizing friend of these 
publicans and sinners. He showed ofif no lofty 
airs of superiority. He had no condescending 

r remarks to make or attitudes to assume. He 
never left the impression that he was coming down 
wonderfully to associate with these men, or that 
they ought to regard him as conferring an ex- 
\ traordinary favor upon such as they. That is a 
^poor way of associating with anybody, and least 
of all with the wicked. It is not Christian, but 
X antichristian. Whatever of this kind of patroniz- 
ing Christianity people have practiced, they have 
done no good by it, but often serious harm. Per- 
haps this may be one cause why the Churches have 
so often failed to reach the workingman and the 
vSO-called humble classes, and the ungodly of all 



Sociability 229 

classes. These people do not want your patroniz- 
ing airs, and, more than that, they will not have 
them. 

Christ associated with even ungodly people on 
terms of equality. In them he recognized and 
emphasized the great truth that all men, in some 
important respects, are equal. These publicans 
and sinners were the children of the same Father. 
It was human blood that flowed through their 
veins. They were partakers of the same splendid 
endowment of intelligence and moral powers and 
endless existence. They were men — not less nor 
more — therefore brothers all. They were heirs 
of redemption and candidates for eternal felicity. 
Christ looked beyond their sin and misery, and 
saw their glorious endowments and possibilities,- 
and he stretched out his hand to them as brothers ; 
brothers fallen indeed, but still brothers all the 
same. That is the only Christian attitude we 
can assume towards men, and sinful men, and 
the worst of men, and all men. 

If such are our beliefs and sentiments, we can 
have no difiiculty in associating with even the 
wicked — no more than Christ had. By drawing 
off from the wicked we hurt the wicked, we hurt 



230 Christ the Apocalypse 

ourselves even more, and we hurt Christ and his 
cause most of all. No, we can receive sinners and ^- 
eat with them, and no harm done anywhere, but ^ 
good done everywhere. For all the difference 
there is between them, the richest man in the 
world may very well associate on equal terms with 
the poorest, the most learned with the most il- 
literate, the greatest monarch with the most ob- 
scure subject, and even the very best with the 
very worst. Christ did not associate with the~7 
wicked to copy their ways, but to teach them his.j 
He was in no danger of being contaminated by 
them; neither will we, if we keep close to him. 
It is not the way to become worldlings in order 
to make worldlings Christians. It is the way to 
lose their respect, and our own self-respect too. 
We can gain the world's contempt as hypocrites 
by pandering to their sin ; we can gain very little 
more. Ungodly men have a better idea of what 
a consistent Christian ought to be than many 
Christians perhaps think. And they have more 
respect for consistent ones than many good people 
imagine. The closest association with the wicked 
— even as close as Christ's — never requires any 
compromise with sin. As to the deep spiritual 



Sociability 231 

things of God, the eyes of the ungodly are very 
shortsighted and dim. We must draw very close 
to them to have them see at all. So did Christ' ^ 
He sat at dinner with them, so they got a good 
look at him, and the dimmest vision caught some- 
thing of his Divine beauty and glory. We must 
take the Christian character up close to the wicked, j 
and some of its blessed beams of heavenly beauty 
will surely fall on the darkest eye. If more Chris- 
tians would copy their Master here, and shine 
before the world, not as distant stars cold and 
afar off, but as the warm sun, filling the orbit of 
life with abundant light and warmth, perhaps . 
there might be a speedier conversion of the world^_J 

Yes, Christ loved human society. It was not 
by constraint, but willingly. He mingled freely 
with his fellow-men and among all sorts of peo- 
ple. If he did not often sit down in friendly con- 
versation with the high priest in his palace, it 
was not because he was not quite willing to do 
so, and would have done so had he been asked. 
If Pilate and he did not hold frequent pleasant 
and profitable talks about what was the truth, it 
was no fault of Christ. If the Sanhedrin and 
he did not discuss in the most friendly terms the 



232 Christ the Apocalypse 

great questions of the law — like as he did with 
those grave men when he was a boy — he had heart 
enough to do it, any time, if they had been wilHng. 
Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, and he was 
quite welcome, and the whole body of Jewish 
rulers might have come in the day-time, and been 
equally welcome. He was ready to receive any- 
body, welcome anybody, treat everybody with the 
greatest courtesy, kindness, and consideration. 
And Christ loved human society on all sorts of 
occasions. When the little one was added to the 
home, the tender sympathy for both mother and 
child in Christ's heart is seen by the way he acted 
when he took the little children up in his arms, 
put his hands upon them, and blessed them. 

No one enjoyed the hilarity of the marriage- 
feast at Cana in Galilee more than Jesus, or took 
a more active part in the convivial scene. No one 
could take greater delight in seeing people well 
and happy, and no one rejoiced more heartily 
when the sick were made well, the lame began 
to walk, the blind opened their eyes, the paralytic 
rose in gladness carrying off his well-worn bed. 
Who had more tender sympathy for the widow 
and orphan than he? The home of Martha and 



Sociability 233 

Mary and Lazarus was one of the most social 
and hospitable in all the land, and nobody liked 
to go there better than Jesus. What heart could 
feel more keenly the bitter sorrow of bereavement 
than his? and whose eyes wept more sincere and 
tender tears of sympathy than those of Jesus? 
This is the Apocalypse of sociability for all ages, 
and for our age. 

The barriers that keep Christians aloof from 
each other may be heathen barriers, and some of 
them diabolical barriers; but they are not Chris- 
tian barriers ; for Christ had none, neither should 
we. The Christian should be the freest, and most ] 
approachable, and most friendly, and most 
sociable of all men or women on earth. Every- 
thing that fosters isolation and helps to keep 
Christians apart from each other and apart from 
all the rest of the world, should be swept away. 
Everything that promotes cordiality, brotherly 
love, and the largest, widest, and most universal 
association among human beings, should be wel- 
comed heartily and practiced earnestly and gladly, j 
This, and this alone, is the spirit of Christ. - — ' 



CHAPTER XII 
SERVICE 

/^^ HRIST is the Apocalypse of human service. 
^^-^ He came not to be ministered unto, but to 
minister. Never man required so Httle help of 
others as Jesus. No man did more of self-help. 
In all his life he put people to as little incon- 
venience as possible to serve him. 

When he traveled, it was on his own feet. 
Sooner than put the disciples to the trouble of 
rowing across Genessaret, he took a short cut 
across the lake on foot. Sooner than oblige the 
disciples to travel round to the nearest village for 
bread, he multiplied the little boy's loaves and 
fishes, and fed the multitude. He would rather 
go hungry any time than trouble people to get 
up a meal for him. The severest rebuke he ever 
gave a woman that the New Testament records 
was given Martha when she was making too much 
ado about cooking a fine dinner for him. 

Many a comparatively poor man or woman 
234 



Service 235 

could not think of getting along without a servant 
or two. Christ had only one — himself. He once 
asked a woman for a drink of water when he was 
very thirsty, and got her so interested in her 
soul's salvation that she forgot all about her 
water-pitcher and he about quenching his thirst. 
He did not demand the temple to preach in, 
though it was his own Father's house, but he 
made a pulpit of any convenient hill or the deck 
of the nearest fishing-boat on the Galilean shore. 
He did not require the largest public building in 
Jerusalem for hospital practice, and send out hun- 
dreds of ambulances to bring in the sick, but he 
walked out among them everywhere, and cured 
them as he went. He did not ask for a thousand 
lamps of olive-oil to light up his vast congrega- 
tions, but used the light of his own sun in the 
sky. He did not order the immense crowds to 
stand off for some hours while he went to prayer, 
but quietly slipped away in the evening into the 
mountains, and remained all night there in prayer 
to God. He did not order the thronging multi- 
tudes to stand off at all, though they kept jostling 
him all day long, so that he had time neither 
to eat nor rest. 



236 Christ the Apocalypse 

This is the Apocalypse of true human service. 
This is what society needs to-day, more than ever 
it did. If Christ troubled nobody, why should 
we? If he put as few burdens as possible on 
others on his account, what right have we to do 
it? Christ had no human slaves running at his 
will; and surely no man on earth has any right 
to have any. He had no servants either, if by 
servants we mean those we look to to do for us 
what we can very well do for ourselves, and ought 
to do. It is no disparagement for the greatest 
monarchs on earth to be seen walking about at- 
tending to their own business and giving as little 
trouble to others as possible. It detracts not a 
particle from the dignity of earth's greatest sons 
and daughters to get down to honest work and 
the strictest kind of self-help. The drone in the 
human hive who fattens on the work of others 
and imagines that he lives only to be pampered 
and caressed and waited on and worshiped by all 
around him, is simply an unchristian nuisance on 
the face of the earth. 

But Christ's self-help was but a small part of 
his social ministry. His pre-eminent character- 
istic and work was as a servant. His aim was 



Service 237 

the minimum of trouble to his fellow-men, the 
maximum of good to all men. Jesus Christ was 
the best servant God ever had on earth because 
he was the best servant man ever had on earth. 
Our devotion to God must be gauged by our de- 
votion to our fellow-men. Christ's prayers and 
songs of praise, and devout communing with God, 
were all translated into the most vigorous and 
various and immense work for the good of men. 

His cry continually was, "What wilt thou that 
I should do unto thee ?'* The strongest credentials 
of his Divine character were those he showed to 
John's inquiring disciples. '*The blind receive 
their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, 
the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor 
have the gospel preached to them." All true 
Christians must show similar credentials; and 
they can. 

Society wants better proofs of a man's piety 
than his profession of religion, his songs or pray- 
ers or devout attitudes. He must, and can, work 
miracles of healing and help among his fellow- 
men by the grace of God. All around him are 
the sick physically and spiritually, and the dead 
in trespasses and in sins, the blind and the deaf. 



238 Christ the Apocalypse 

the halting and the unclean, the weak and the help- 
less, the poor, the sorrowing, the forlorn. What 
has he done, what is he doing, to help them? 
That is the measure of his Christianity. 

On every Christian's coat of arms there is the 
same motto that adorns the escutcheon of the 
prince royal of England, "I serve;" and that is 
the most royal of all royal mottoes, for it is 
Christ's own. Christ has dignified forever what 
men might call service of the smallest and lowest 
sort, — a cup of cold water given in the name of 
a disciple, and to get down on your knees and 
wash a brother's feet. It was a new lesson of 
service that men learned when Jesus girded him- 
self with the towel and bent to wash the disciples' 
feet. It upset Peter's notions of dignity alto- 
gether, and it was intended to do that, and to 
upset forever the false notions of dignity which 
prevailed before Christ's time and since. 

It derogates from no man's dignity to do the 
most menial-looking service for his fellow-man 
whenever he needs it, and he is not the right kind 
of Christian if he does not do it. Christ crowned 
himself with undying honor by doing that very 
thing, and every Christian gets a similar crown 



Service 239 

who follows his Lord's example and command, 
for this is Christ's command, "If I, your Lord 
and Master, have washed your feet, ye ought to 
wash one another's feet." If this spirit dominated 
the Christian heart of the world to-day, how many 
of the stern socialistic problems that confront and 
appall mankind would still maintain their dark 
and threatening attitude? 

It is this Christ-spirit and Christ-service, like 
its twin sister. Faith, that has always "subdued 
kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained prom- 
ises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the 
violence of fire, and turned to flight the armies 
of the aliens." This, and such as this, will alone 
kill the dangerous and violent elements of all per- 
verted socialistic ideas and schemes in the world. 

Modern socialism in some of its violent forms, 
like a vast glacier, threatens to slip from its fas- 
tenings, and roll down on society, hurling deso- 
lation and death in its path. The Christ-spirit 
and the Christ-service, like the burning rays of a 
tropical sun, can thaw its icy hostility into fer- 
tilizing streams that will fill society with beauty, 
fruitfulness, and joy. 



CHAPTER XIII 
SACRIFICE 

/'^HRIST'S whole relationship to society was 
^-^ one of sacrifice. Life is not one supreme act, 
but a multitude of little ones. Christ's life was 
both. He always kept his temper; and that was 
a lifelong sacrifice. Christ could get angry, other- 
wise he would not have been a man, and he would 
certainly not have been a good man. Anger is 
an indispensable quality in nobility of character; 
that is, anger of the right kind ; for there are two 
sorts. There is an anger which sins not, and 
there is an anger which must be put away along 
with malice, hatred, and filthy communication. 
There are evils which, if they do not kindle anger 
in a righteous and noble nature, it is because there 
is not so much that is righteous and noble in that 
nature as there ought to be. There are evils in the 
world that ought to set the world's righteous 

wrath ablaze so as to burn them out of existence; 
240 



Sacrifice 241 

and it is no credit to mankind that that furnace of 
holy wrath remains unkindled. At times Christ 
was angry, and his displeasure was a devouring 
flame. As he looked around, and saw men ready 
to murder him if possible, if he cured on the Sab- 
bath-day a poor fellow's withered hand, he was 
angry because of the hardness of these men's 
hearts. As he saw the loudest professors of spot- 
less sanctity in all the land, at heart the basest 
and meanest and most treacherous and cruel of 
all the sinners in Palestine, he was angry, and de- 
nounced them in unmeasured indignation as 
vipers and hypocrites that could not escape the 
damnation of hell. Whatever stood in the way 
of relieving the miseries of men's bodies and the 
saving of their souls, and" especially if it was 
clothed in the garments of sanctimonious hypoc- 
risy, awoke the anger of Jesus and drew from him 
his short, terrible thunderbolts of wrath. That 
kind of wrath the world needs to-day more than 
ever it did, as one of its noblest benedictions. 

But Christ never lost his temper. Anger in 
the common and bad significance he knew nothing 
of. This kind of anger is murder in its incipient 

stage, and is a child of hell. It costs something 
16 



242 Christ the Apocalypse 

for a man always to keep his temper. It is one 
of the hardest of all things to do, and one of the 
most useful to society. Many a man could storm 
a fortress, ride on the crest of some daring and 
famous act, and fly into a passion at some trivial 
provocation in his own home, or among his neigh- 
bors. No matter what men said or did, Christ 
never flew into a passion, either great or small. 
He was the strong man of his day, and the strong 
man for all ages and generations to copy after. 

" Anger is a short madness," was a heathen dic- 
tum, and it is a Christian one as well. But the 
trouble is that the short madness is long enough 
to set the world on fire, as it often has done. It 
is the angry word, the angry deed, that gives 
birth to most of the awful crimes that disgrace the 
land, and fill the prisons with dishonored men. 
It is the unbridled anger that splits society into 
hostile camps, breeds feuds that last for genera- 
tions, and that often have involved whole nations 
in the bloodiest wars. A passionate word from 
Jesus might have set all Palestine ablaze, and in- 
deed the whole Roman Empire. But he never ut- 
tered it. He never allowed it a place in his heart. 
And all men had better follow his blessed example. 



Sacrifice 243 

The grace of God is powerful enough to enable 
any man to control firmly his temper. It means 
self-sacrifice, ever present, and of the most heroic 
sort, but nothing among men will ever pay better. 
Christ made no reprisals. He never paid off 
people in their own coin. He never tried to get 
even with his enemies. It took some self-sacri- 
fice to do that. It would have been the easiest 
thing in the world for him to call the fire from 
heaven that James and John suggested on the 
Samaritan villagers who had treated him in such 
an unmannerly way. It would have been no 
trouble at all to send for a few legions of angels 
to teach his Jewish persecutors a few lessons. 
When hjs old associates of Nazareth so far forgot 
their former townsman as to hustle him off for 
a leap over the rock to his destruction, he could 
have taught them that he was not the poor, weak 
carpenter's boy they took him to be. When the 
big men of the Church and State passed him by 
with a shrug of the shoulders, and winked at each 
other in derision, he could have compelled their 
respect by putting some of those dreadful diseases 
on their persons which he was taking off the poor 
wretches of Palestine every day. When the crowd 



244 Christ the Apocalypse 

roared, "Crucify him! crucify him!" he might 
have said, "I will soon let you see whether you 
can crucify me or not; no, you can not crucify 
me, but I will crucify you." Christ said, did, 
none of these things, because he could not come 
down to the weak, sinful, foolish things of men. 
Christ sacrificed all these resentments without a 
moment's hesitation, and the best thing any man 
can do is to do the same thing. 

The curse of society is resentments, and peo- 
ple that must and will carry out their resentments. 
Society could not hold together for a month if 
everybody practiced resentment and reprisals on 
others, as some people do. Society would have 
but little trouble at all if everybody repaid in- 
juries and insults and bad conduct as some people 
do; that is, those who follow closely the patient 
forbearance and self-sacrificing, forgiving spirit 
of our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. As 
long as the world stands and human society exists, 
there will be thousands of occasions for patient 
endurance of wrongs, and we may as well endure 
the wrongs in the spirit of Jesus, for you can 
neither kill nor cure them any other way. 

Christ is the Apocalypse of that good nature 



Sacrifice 245 

which alone is the source and spring of good man- 
ners. It cost something to keep sweet with so' 
much to embitter, to remain tender with so much 
to harden, to keep in unbroken sympathy with 
man with so much to ahenate his heart fromj 
everything human. This did not mean that Christ 
shut his eyes to the evil around him, or under- 
valued it, or took things easy respecting it. He 
knew it all, and hated it all as no good man ever 
did before him or since. But Jesus did not scold 
it out of existence, or complain it away, or frown 
it out of his path, or cut it to pieces with biting 
sarcasm. He was not in a constant ferment of 
irritation and complaint and lamentation and 
fault-finding. He never for a moment lost his 
self-possession, his equanimity, his kindliness of 
manner, his sweetness of disposition, his gentle- 
ness, and, if you like, his gentlemanliness. He 
could administer rebukes the most severe, but al- 
ways just, well-timed, and manly, and that peo- 
ple's common sense perceived were well-merited 
and always in the spirit of love. 

Christ's rebukes often made a better im- 
pression on people than other men's commenda- 
tions, and his commendations were often more 



246 Christ the Apocalypse 

impressive rebukes than other men's denuncia- 
tions. Christ has forever enthroned gentleness 

fand kindHness of manner and spirit as one of the 
most precious and powerful of all human influ- 
ences that mold and control society. It was some- 
thing of this spirit that the old cavalier caught 
in his gallant treatment of woman, and which has 
been refined and elevated still further into the 
Christian etiquette that treats every woman as a 
lady. All the sweet and beautiful things of 
highly-cultured good manners — and it has plenty 
of them — have sprung from the same source. All 
the delightful amenities of modern society in its 
purest and best forms are of the same Christian 
origin. This is one of the strongest links that 

, binds society together. Its universal diffusion 

I would be a universal blessing. 

~ It is the little kindly word, the little courtesy, 
the little kindly deed, the little thoughtful atten- 
tion, the little graceful bow or smile or look, the 
little teardrop in the eye, the little gentle pressure 
of the hand, the thousand little, sweet, and beau- 
tiful, and tender things that have no name at all,— 
these are the things that knit the souls of men 

\ as with invisible bonds, but bonds indissoluble. 



CHAPTER XIV 
MORAL REFORM 

/'^HRIST was the Apocalypse of moral reform. 

^-^ We have intemperance and the liquor-traffic, 

the opium-trade, the slave-trade, the social evil, 

political and civic corruption, and many other 

grievous immoralities in society. All these evils, 

in one form or another, or kindred evils, existed 

in Christ's day as v^ell as ours. What he did 

with them is what we are to do. 

What did he do? A very important part of 

what he did, is what he did not. He never gave 

men to believe that, if plenty of money could be 

made in any of these lines of evil, they might be 

allowed to go on. Nothing that we can imagine 

would have been more completely opposed to all 

Christ's teaching than that. He did say, "Ye 

can not serve God and Mammon." Mammon is 

money-making, no matter what principle is sac- 

247 



248 Christ the Apocalypse 

rificed. That and serving God are as far apart 
as heaven and hell. 

Millions of money, hundreds and thousands 
of millions, can be made by the trade in strong 
drink. Slavery was once a most lucrative trade, 
and still is in some parts of the world. So is 
the opium trade and many other immoral trades. 
If Christ never justified any of these because of 
the money that could be made out of them, what 
right have we to do it? If men make money 
out of these trades, and the State gets part of 
the money by making them pay for the privilege, 
neither the one nor the other has the least author- 
ity from Christ for doing it. Neither did Christ 
say that any one or all of these trades were so 
strongly rooted in society that they could not be 
effectually uprooted, and because of the fixed de- 
termination of such multitudes to uphold them 
that it would only do more harm than good to 
persist in the attempt, and that we must tolerate 
and regulate them as best we can, and reduce the 
evil in this way to the smallest possible di- 
mensions. No. He never said anything of the 
kind. But that is precisely what the world has 
been saying about these evils, and is to-day the 



Moral Reform 249 

loudest of all utterances and apparently the most 
emphatic belief of hosts of even good people. 
Jesus was no teacher of expediency and compro- 
mise with evil, and timid treatment of the cruel 
tyrannies of sin. He was the most stalwart and 
fearless of all radical reformers this world ever 
saw. He laid down principles whose keen edge 
cuts mercilessly at the very roots of every one of 
these iniquities. 

The ^'social evil" has been called the **despair 
of social reform." But how much of its very roots 
would be left if people would take heed to Christ's 
declaration, "Whosoever looketh upon a woman 
to lust after her, hath committed adultery with 
her in his heart." ''And if thy right eye offend 
thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee; for it 
is profitable for thee that one of thy members 
should perish, and not that thy whole body should 
be cast into hell." If men would pay some at- 
tention to Christ's command, ''Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself," how many of the dark- 
skinned Arabs of the East or the white-skinned 
ones of the West would enslave the Negroes of 
Africa or the white helots of civilized lands who 
work for starvation wages in the so-called Chris- 



250 Christ the Apocalypse 

tian man's factory? Christ's "Golden Rule" alone 
deals a deathblow to every mean, selfish, bad busi- 
ness on earth. In all his teaching there are only 
two things, the right and the wrong way. The 
right he upholds regardless of consequences, be- 
cause it is the will of God ; the wrong he condemns 
regardless of consequences, because it is contrary 
to the will of God. 

If we follow Christ, there is only one question 
to decide as to that portentous problem, for in- 
stance, "Temperance and the Liquor-traffic." If 
it is right to make, buy, and sell and use strong 
drink as a beverage, then you can not overthrow 
it, for Christ is on its side. But if it is wrong — 
all wrong from beginning to end — in its nature, 
tendency, and effects ; if it is full of injustice, im- 
purity, falsehood, and fraud, and inflicts on man- 
kind all manner of injury, temporal, spiritual, and 
eternal, then its greatest enemy is Christ. Tested 
by every principle Christ ever taught, by his whole 
character, life, and work, by all his Divine re- 
lationships as the Son of God, and by all his hu- 
man relationships as the Savior of men, the 
liquor-traffic stands condemned as one of the most 



Moral Reform 251 

iniquitous, injurious, and accursed evils that ever 
afflicted humanity. 

But Christ drank wine. Very probably he did. 
That he was a "wine-bibber" is no more proved 
by what his slanderers said than that he was a 
"glutton :" "Behold a man gluttonous and a wine- 
bibber." He made wine at the marriage- feast of 
Cana. Certainly. If it was intoxicating wine, 
then he made wine that he himself condemned, for 
he commanded his prophet to say, "Wine is a 
mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever 
is deceived thereby is not wise." But Jesus used 
wine at the Last Supper, drank of it himself, and 
said to his disciples, "Drink ye all of it." He 
did. If it were intoxicating wine, then Jesus as 
good as said, "Although I have before declared 
by the mouth of my holy prophet, %ook not on 
the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color 
in the cup, when it moveth itself aright ; at the last 
it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder,' 
yet look on this same wine now, and take this 
cup in remembrance of me. Even though at the 
last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an 
adder, yet it is a most fitting emblem of my shed 



252 Christ the Apocalypse 

blood, shed for the remission of the sins of the 
world." 

This sounds like blasphemy, but whose blas- 
phemy is it? Not that of those who believe that 
Christ's wine on that solemn occasion was the 
pure, unfermented juice of the grape, but rather 
that of those who maintain that the wine Christ 
used was certainly fermented, intoxicating wine. 
If Christ took a bunch of perfectly ripe and per- 
fectly sound grapes, and expressed the juice into 
a cup; if he took a piece of unleavened bread — 
that is, bread made without yeast — and broke it 
as the symbol of the breaking of his body on the 
cross and the shedding of his blood for the sins 
of the world, was not that as appropriate, as im- 
pressive, as holy, as sublime a lesson to mankind 
as could well be imagined of his sacrificial death, 
and worthy of everlasting observance in all after 
ages of time? If that was the fact — and men are 
fast coming to believe that it was the fact — then 
Christ gave no more countenance to the modern 
use of alcoholics than he gave to the modern prac- 
tice of any abominable crime. Nothing could be 
more absurd and wicked than to charge the spot- 
less Son of God with giving the slightest counte- 



Moral Reform 253 

nance to the drinking of the horrible liquors of 
our day, such as rum and brandy, whisky and 
wine, which is only another name for one of the 
fiery decoctions of modern alcoholics, made more 
fiery still by the addition of the most potent 
poisons. 

But did not Christ use moral suasion, and 
moral suasion alone, in combating the great evils 
of the world? Yes, assuredly. But moral 
suasion is a pretty comprehensive thing. One of 
its most important branches is law; and law is 
always a prohibiting thing. The Ten Command- 
ments is moral suasion crystallized into law, and 
it is all prohibitory. Its enactments of the right 
imply the prohibition of the wrong. God forces 
no man to be good whether he will or no. Christ 
never did, and man can not. No law on the 
statute-book can make a thief an honest man, a 
liar a person speaking truth, a lustful character 
clean, a bad man good. No branch of moral 
suasion can do it either; and no power in the 
whole universe can do it at all, but the grace of 
Almighty God, and the accepted influence of the 
Holy Spirit, working on the human heart. 

Moral suasion in its widest acceptation is cer- 



254 Christ the Apocalypse 

tainly man's only power to make the world bet- 
ter ; but it ought to exhaust all its resources in the 
attempt. It can entreat and reason and invite; 
it can pour forth all the treasures of its sympathy, 
its pity, its love; it can put every possible help 
in the way of doing right, and every possible 
hindrance in the way of doing wrong. All God's 
laws are framed in that spirit, and all man's laws, 
too, that are worth anything. That was Christ's 
moral suasion. 

If the liquor-traffic and intemperance can not 
be exterminated by mere legal enactment — and it 
can not, no more than any other evil can be ex- 
terminated by mere legal enactment — the liquor- 
traffic ought not to be sustained by law, or helped 
to exist by law, or receive the least encourage- 
ment by law. Christ never ordained that men 
should legislate in favor of sin, or give the small- 
est legal encouragement to sin, or supply the 
smallest legal opportunity for the practice of sin. 
If the liquor-traffic is right, the proper function 
of moral suasion is to persuade men, as far as 
possible, to uphold and practice it. All that moral 
suasion can do, both in its arguments, entreaties, 
and legal enactments, ought to be done to uphold 



Moral Reform 255 

and strengthen it and extend it as far and as 
widely as possible; for everything right deserves 
such treatment as that. If the liquor-traffic is 
wrong, then the whole power of moral suasion, 
both of argument and entreaty and legal enact- 
ment, should be employed to do away with it, 
just as any other evil is done away with, as far 
as is possible. That is what Christ taught men 
to do, and what he teaches us to do, and it is the 
only proper thing to do, and the only thing that 
will be of any avail to do. 

If you can not entirely destroy any evil by 
legislating against it, you certainly can not de- 
stroy it by legislating for it. Evil js always ready 
enough to go on in spite of all laws made to stop 
it • it is much more ready to seize the least favor 
shown it, and especially legal favor to go on with 
vastly accelerated force. Of no evil can this be 
more appropriately said than of the liquor-trade 
and intemperance. Your laws of a merely re- 
strictive or regulating sort will always be trans- 
lated into the widest liberty to do just as much 
as it can possibly dare to do. All license laws are 
in their very nature foredoomed failures, and, as 
a matter of fact, they always have been failures. 



256 Christ the Apocalypse 

You can deal with any evil as yoa deal with theft 
or murder; you can totally prohibit it by all the 
powers of reason and persuasion and law, and 
in that way alone can you reduce its influence to 
the smallest possible proportions. This is abso- 
lutely the only thing — and the only Christian 
thing — that can be done with the liquor-traffic; 
and it is precisely the same with any and all other 
of the great evils of the land. 



CHAPTER XV 
THE CHURCH 

/^HRIST is the Apocalypse of the Church. 
^-^ Like as in all great things, the essential idea 
of the Church is very simple. It is a meeting, 
an assembly of believers in Jesus. It is so simple, 
so natural, as to be self -necessitating and self- 
explanatory. A man accepts Jesus as his Savior ; 
another does the same. They meet. That meet- 
ing is the Church. It all grows out of that. If 
two more meet the first two, it is only a meeting 
still; if two millions more join the company, it 
is only a meeting still. If all the world unite, it 
is only a meeting still. 

They may meet under the shade of a tree; 
underground, like the Christians in the Catacombs 
of Rome; on the mountain-tops, like the Vaudois 
and the Covenanters of Scotland; in the home, 
like that of Aquila and Priscilla, whose Church 
in their house was saluted by the other Churches 
17 257 



258 Christ the Apocalypse 

of Asia. As a shelter from tlie rain and cold and 
storm, it is necessary to have some kind of pro- 
tection, and, on the whole, it is more convenient 
to have a place set apart for the purpose; a tent, 
a shanty, a log-house like the first churches built 
in North iVmerica; a building larger and more 
convenient as circumstances require. The meet- 
ing itself discloses the necessity for some kind of 
orderly procedure, as all human gatherings re- 
quire. Some one must lead, and so the meeting 
appoints some one. The meeting wants to do 
something. It wants to praise the Savior whom 
each one loves. It wants to hear about him, and 
especially about what he did to save men. It 
never tires of hearing about that. It wants to 
know exactly what Jesus expects people to do in 
every-day life, and how it is to be done, and the 
end of it all in the future world. And so songs 
are sung as the most tender and fitting way the 
heart can find to utter its feelings, and preaching 
comes into use, and the ministry of the Word, 
and the holy record of Christ's life and character 
and teaching and death is read and explained, 
and applied to the hearts and lives of the hearers, 
and God is asked to help each one to love the 



The Church 259 

Savior faithfully and do just what he wants men 
to do. 

As the main thought of the meeting must ever 
be what Christ did upon the cross to redeem men, 
so very often a special meeting is devoted to the 
vivid remembrance of that great act of Christ, 
and the Lord's sacramental table is spread; and 
as there must be some door of entrance into this 
meeting of God's children, so baptism comes into 
use. As this is a meeting of believers, so it is 
expected that believers shall behave themselves in 
a Christian way in their relation to each other, 
to all the rest of mankind, and to God himself; 
and so rules are laid down for the guidance of 
each and all. Thus Church government comes 
into use. And as all men can not think just ex- 
actly alike in regard to hardly anything, not even 
excepting religion, and as it is perfectly right that 
it should be so, it is necessary both to allow a 
great liberty of thought and opinion, and just as 
necessary to have some general understanding and 
agreement as to the most essential truths con- 
nected with Christ, his cross, and the other great 
doctrines and duties of his religion ; and so, creeds 
and confessions of faith are formed. 



26o Christ the Apocalypse 

In proportion as the meeting is full of ani- 
mation and zeal and love, it begins to feel sorry 
for those who are not in it and who do not love 
Jesus, and so it sets to work to persuade those 
outside to accept Christ too. And as it goes on 
with this work, it finds multitudes in the same 
sad condition, many of them in foreign lands, who 
never heard of Jesus at all, and it can not rest 
until it sends off some of its own people to these 
distant lands, and the missionary work abroad as 
well as at home begins. And as it continues in 
this work, it makes amazing discoveries of the 
wretched state of the poor and sick, the ignorant, 
the downtrodden, the degraded, the lost, and so 
hospitals and schools and philanthropies and 
moral reforms of all kinds spring up, and branch 
out in all directions, embracing all sorts of good 
deeds to the bodies and souls of men In all na- 
tions of the world. 

The Church springs as naturally from the 
simple idea of the meeting as the tree grows from 
the seed. But there is a Divine shaping in both. 
It is God's will and command that they should. 
The Church is as much an institution of Divine 
appointment as it is an outgrowth of human con- 



V 



The Church 261 

venience, good sense, and necessity. The ecclesia, 
or congregation, the meeting of Christians called 
together by the good sense of Christian people 
and the good will of the Divine Father, is of 
itself a junction of moral forces of all kinds. 

As two rivers can not meet and mingle with- 
out the creation of a new and greater force, so 
Christian union is strength, and it is meant to b' 
and in its nature must be. The sympathy and 
agreement of Christian hearts means an aggre- 
gate of moral strength for each in a far more 
than geometric proportion. God himself recog- 
nizes this, and declares, ^'Whatsoever two or three 
of you agree as touching the kingdom, shall be 
done." 

The meeting of Christians generates life, en- 
thusiastic life. The glow of love in one kindles 
a similar fire around. As iron sharpeneth iron, 
so does the countenance of the Christian man his 
friend. The Christian edge of enthusiasm is thus 
sharpened to cut away the last remains of selfish- 
ness, and to cut down with heroic strokes all the 
dominant evils in the world. The organization 
of the Church springs from its own genius — the 
junction and conjunction of Christian men and 



262 Christ the Apocalypse 

women. Their meeting is an idea as sublime as 
it is simple, but the preservation of its sublimity 
depends on the preservation of its simplicity. 

Men have not always done that. They have 
been tempted to engraft the complex systems of 
their own on the original stock, and they have 
yielded to the temptation. And so the world has 
come to witness an ecclesiastical growth on the 
simple stem of the original ecclesia, or meeting, 
of governmental systems borrowed from imperial 
Rome, from Judaism, from modern monarchical 
despotisms, and even from heathenism itself. 
The meeting has thus, in some instances, been 
transformed into a vast dominion governed by 
the most despotic and unalterable laws. The 
simple minister or servant of the Church is 
changed into the autocratic priest, the humble 
overseer or bishop into a princely magnate whose 
scepter strikes far more terror and awe than the 
average king. The conscience and will of the 
believer are no longer his own, but must belong 
to the hierarchical tyranny that lords it over all 
God's heritage. Doctrines are either read into the 
simple truths of the gospel, or are invented to 
sustain this human system of tyranny, and the 



The Church 263 

pains and penalties of perdition are threatened 
to all who dissent from it. 

Romanism is the most signal instance of the 
success of this elaboration of human despotism 
superimposed on the simple idea of the Church 
of God. But there is Rom.anism without as well 
as within the Church of Rome. Romish de- 
partures from the original simplicity of the gospel 
notion of the Church have occurred and are oc- 
curring in other Churches as well. In fact, the 
tendency is strong in all ages to develop human 
ideas and governments in connection with the 
Church of God. Even lay priestism has not been 
unknown in the Church, whose monopoly of 
power is not a whit less onerous and mischievous 
than clerical. 

There have been Churches where caste and 
party and social distinction have had far too much 
predominance. There have been Churches where 
the dry-rot of formalism and worldliness have 
left but little of true spiritual life remaining. The 
meeting of some is almost overtopped in the wor- 
ship of the place of meeting — some gorgeous 
temple. The spirit of the meeting is, in many 
cases, the spirit that admires the classic music, 



264 Christ the Apocalypse 

the sensational oratory, or that seeks its worldly 
advantage in having a sharp eye to business. In 
a thousand ways the human intrudes upon the 
Divine, and supplants the Divine. The many 
reformations of the Churches have all been to 
restore the Church to its original simplicity and 
purity, and they have all been needed, and they 
have all been successful in greater or less degree. 
Plenty more reformations are needed now. 
They will come, and they will succeed. They will 
be needed to the end of time, as long as human 
nature is what it is, and Satan is what he is. 
The Church will never cease to slough off its 
human and diabolical accretions as long as Christ 
is its Head and the Holy Spirit strives with men. 
With all its faults, the Church is by far the 
mightiest organization of men on earth. It is 
immeasurably the noblest and best association in 
the world. It is so because it is Christ's society. 
He is its Head, its Life, its Inspiration and its 
Glory. The worst Churches are better than the 
best human organizations, because they have 
something, or indeed much, of Christ in them. 
But the best Church on earth is not all that Christ 
intends it to be and to do and to suffer for him. 



The Church 265 

The meeting of Christ's believers has possibihties 
within it that still slumber in inaction or have 
never been discovered at all. The Church of 
Christ has a wider mission than it knows, or will 
ever know, except as it learns at the feet of Jesus. 
Anything narrower than Christ's ideal is too nar- 
row for the Church, which is his body. Any- 
thing, however broad and all comprehending in 
his example, is none too broad for his Church. 
If that be true, there is no sort of benevolence or 
philanthropy or service for the good of man, in 
its widest range or its most varied ramification, 
too much or too unsuitable for the Church to 
undertake. 

The felt wants of men outside the ordinary 
range of work that the Church of the past has 
set for its special task have originated a multi- 
tude of benevolent and philanthropic institutions. 
The very Sunday-school itself is one of the earliest 
and most important of these. It was the neglect 
of both Church and home that first started the 
Sunday-school. Fraternal societies, brother- 
hoods, unions of all kinds for mutual help in sick- 
ness and poverty and death, and hosts of chari- 
table and benevolent institutions and associations 



266 Christ the Apocalypse 

for moral reforms, have arisen in the world. 
These are certainly the offspring of Christianity. 
They are for the most part in affinity with the 
Church, but most of them are distinctly apart 
from it, and build on their own separate, inde- 
pendent foundations. If it be true that all these 
are working in their proper sphere, then there is 
very much of Christian work that properly lies 
v^athout the Church — the body of Christ — a thing 
which is a transparent contradiction. The Church 
— the body of Christ — is Christ himself still at 
w^ork through his members, and means the con- 
tinuation of the work Christ did when he was 
here, and that means every good work that can 
be done to man. 

If men, actuated by the Christ-spirit, do these 
good works without the Church, they could do 
them as well within, and with better advantage 
to themselves and to the Church itself, whose 
power for good would be enormously increased 
thereby. To realize anything so vast as this 
would require all the energies and resources of a 
united Church. For this Christ prayed ''that they 
all may be one." The whole genius of his re- 
ligion favors and requires union. The body of 



The Church 267 

Christ was never intended to be at variance in 
its members. And it can never fully accomplish 
its sublime mission on other conditions than unity 
and harmony. This unity and harmony is per- 
haps not so difficult or impossible a thing as men 
have generally supposed. If it is an extremely 
difficult thing to realize, it is not Christ who has 
made it difficult, but men themselves. Barriers 
of human creation are mostly responsible for all 
the divisions the Church has ever had. It is easy 
to impose conditions of Church membership that 
Christ never imposed, and men have often done 
that. It is easy to formulate doctrines and doc- 
trinal tests that Christ never formulated, and men 
have often done that. It is easy to hew out nar- 
row ruts of theory and practice that Christ never 
hewed out, and men have often done that. It | 
is when men set about mending Christ's plans ^ 
and ideas and example, and affix to these their 
fancied improvements on his Divine system, or 
interpret Christ according to their preconceived 
notions of what is right, that discord begins and 
the body of Christ is rent asunder by divisions, j 
If such causes of division as these are fully ac- 
credited with all the mischief they have done, 



268 Christ the Apocalypse 

there would not be much of division left to be 
accounted for. 

But Christ's prayer has been answered, can be 
answered, and will be answered. The Christian 
Church to-day is one in large degree — in larger 
degree than ever before. The lines on which the 
modern Christian Church is running out, almost 
without design, all tend towards this very unity 
for which Christ prayed. A close scrutiny of the 
great Christian doctrines on which men agree re- 
veals a remarkable consensus of opinion. The dif- 
ferences mostly radiate around what are really 
minor points. Notwithstanding all the strong 
differences of Christian opinion and practice, such 
grand associations as the Evangelical Alliance and 
the Bible Society, not to speak of others, have 
united the Christian world in many noble Chris- 
tian enterprises. In a thousand ways the 
Churches do join hands in carrying on Christ's 
work in the world. 

There is a deep and abiding and growing 
brotherliness of spirit among Christians the world 
over, often expressed, and oftener still left un- 
expressed, except by deeds, which speak far louder 
than words. The barriers that keep Christians 



The Church 269 

apart are very largely only Chinese walls, easily 
overleaped and constantly overleaped as any great 
occasion calls for the expression of the cosmopoli- 
tan opinion of the Christian world. 

All this may help to teach us the real mean- 
ing of Christ's prayer for unity. The likelihood 
is we have not yet fully understood his meaning. 
It is easy to put uniformity for luiity, and that 
has been very largely done; but Christ never did 
that. Uniformity does not imply unity, nor unity 
uniformity. A uniform Church would not neces- 
sarily be a united Church, and a Church with large 
diversity would not necessarily be a divided 
Church. Unity in diversity, and diversity in 
unity, is God's law everywhere so far as we know. 
The most perfect harmony exists where there is 
the largest and freest diversity. Is not that 
Christ's law for the Church as well ? Christ never 
intended that all Christians should be of one pat- 
tern. He never intended them to think and speak 
and act in all respects exactly alike. Christ was 
far broader than his disciples, and he is broader 
than any of them now. He gave a wider range 
for the exercise of true discipleship than his most 
liberal-minded followers could understand or fol- 



270 Christ the Apocalypse 

low, or than they can understand and follow 
to-day. If Christ acknowledges a soul as his dis- 
ciple, why should not we? No matter what his 
color, or nation, or cast of mind, or peculiarity of 
notion, or wide divergence from some other Chris- 
tian, or some standard Christian which the Church 
may set up as a model — if Christ says, "He is 
mine," why should not we say, *'He is my 
brother?" And if he is my brother, why should 
I withhold from him my right hand of fellowship ? 
If this principle be correct, it ought to solve 
the problem of Church unity throughout the 
world. And it is correct, and it will solve that 
problem; for it is doing it now. Probably the 
day is not so far away when Christian men will 
see that large diversity of both belief and practice 
should not and shall not keep Christians apart. 
The good sense and the Christ-spirit of God's 
children may, sooner than we think, find a way 
to unite the scattered and hostile forces of Chris- 
tendom on a basis of the largest and truest liberty 
for every man and every congregation and every 
denomination to think out their own Christian 
thoughts and work out their own Christian works, 
but in completest harmony Avith all the essentials 



The Church 271 

of Christianity, and in perfect union with their 
glorious Lord, and in loving co-operation with 
every other member of his mystical body. That 
may seem to be a dream ; but much more wonder- 
ful and impossible-looking dreams have become 
true. A hundred years to come men may look 
back with amazement at the folly that now keeps 
Christians apart, and regard the causes of separa- 
tion as we now regard the folly of those who op- 
posed the introduction of steam and electricity 
and other modern improvements which have so 
mightily enlarged the scope and elevated the char- 
acter of our civilization. 

The Church of Christ is indeed a kingdom, 
but it is "an empire within an empire;" in the 
world most emphatically, but not of the world. 
It is in the world as an all-pervading force, a 
molding, subduing, rectifying, purifying, en- 
nobling, saving power, but drawing its inspira- 
tion, not from beneath, but from above. Its whole 
genius, aims, and triumphs are not of earth at 
all, but are altogether heavenly. It is to touch 
and bless everything earthly; it is to be absorbed 
and corrupted by nothing earthly. In a word, 
it is to be Christlike. Never was man more hu- 



27^ Christ the Apocalypse 

man than Jesus; never did man come into closer 
contact with all things human and all things 
earthly than Jesus. But never was man so little 
of the earth in its spirit, aims, and practices. The 
corruption of the Church begins when the earthly 
begins to subvert the heavenly, — when the world 
begins to get out from beneath the Church's feet 
and rise toward the headship of its affairs. 

The one great and all-comprehending work 
of the Church is to preach Christ with the Holy 
Ghost sent down from heaven. What this means 
was vividly manifested on the day of Pentecost. 
Peter preached Christ that day. The wants of 
his audience were as cosmopolitan as the world. 
All human needs were concentrated before him. 
He preached Christ, and Christ is the supply of 
all human needs. The redemption of men by 
Jesus Christ is their redemption from sin, the root 
of all their miseries, and the introduction of every 
form of help that any human being can ever re- 
quire. These men heard, many of them for the 
first time in their lives, of salvation through 
Christ, the far-reaching effects of which they were 
totally unable to comprehend. They accepted 
Christ, and the uplift of their humanity began; 



The Church 273 

a vast uplift indeed, but only the germinal begin- 
nings of an elevation and ennoblement reaching 
out in all possible directions and to an ever-in- 
creasing and endless duration. The germs of all 
Christian civilization, of all human progress, of 
all human amelioration, of all human development 
that is worthy, were there that day, as well as the 
ecstatic joy of sins forgiven, and conscious soul- 
reconciliation with God, and the fullness of spirit- 
ual blessings that flowed in upon them as a river 
of light and love from the throne of the Eternal 
God. Pentecost was a new era in the world's 
history. It was the world's reformation, the 
world's resurrection to grander life, th.e world's 
new birth of hope and joy, all presaged and prom- 
ised and, on a small scale, enacted before the eyes 
of men. 

The Church can not preach anything more 
than Christ, and if it preach anything less, it 
might as well not preach at all. Peter preached 
Christ with the Holy Ghost accompanying ; other- 
wise his preaching would have signally failed. 
Peter without the Holy Ghost is seen in the shame- 
ful drama he enacted at Christ's betrayal. He 

could have talked eloquently of Jesus in the high 
18 



274 Christ the Apocalypse 

priest's hall, for he knew enough of Jesus to do 
that; but he could not talk of Jesus at all except 
to swear that he did not know him. If Peter 
could not preach Christ without the Holy Spirit, 
no man can. A man may preach Christ as he 
preaches Socrates or Aristotle or Plato, and with 
the same results. But the effective preaching of 
Christ raises the dead, casts out the devils of lust 
and pride and uncleanness, cleanses the lepers of 
sin, and heals, and saves, and regenerates, and 
makes entirely new and good men out of old and 
evil ones. That can not be done by merely talk- 
ing of Jesus, however eloquently, but by the life- 
giving energy of the Spirit of God accompanying 
what men say, directing them what to say, en- 
lightening their minds that they may have some- 
thing vivid and strong and applicable to say, and 
lending the heavenly fire that burns its way 
through all sorts of prejudices, melts down all 
sorts of hardened obstructions, and ushers the soul 
into the glorious liberty of God's children. That 
was Pentecostal preaching of Christ, and that kind 
of preaching alone is the distinct mission of the 
Church, and alone worth while for the Church to 



The Church 275 

engage in at all. Such preaching will save the 
world, and no other can. 

Pentecostal life in the Church means aggres- 
sion on the world of evil and consequent victory 
for Christ's kingdom all over the earth. Can this 
globe, with its ten thousand deep-seated evils; its 
triumphant vices, hoary with ages of continued 
dominion; its vast realms, where Satan sways an 
almost unchallenged power; where the slavery of 
superstition has inoculated the innermost fiber of 
human nature; where thick darkness broods over 
countless millions; where the strong encasements 
of sin have wrapped up the human soul as with 
a hundred coats of mail ; where every remedy has 
uniformly failed in every age, and where hope 
seems forever lost in the labyrinths of despair, — 
can this world be effectively won to Christ ? Can 
its teeming millions indeed be made the glorious 
subjects of the Redeemer of men, and truly saved 
through him who has surely bought them all with 
his precious blood? Can this be done? Is there 
an answer that can be given to this, not born of 
fancy or illusion or folly, but an answer as soberly 
true as it is effectually complete? Yes, indeed 



276 Christ the Apocalypse 

there is. "Go ye," said Christ, "into all the world, 
and preach the gospel to every creature ; and, lo ! 
I am with you always." 

That settles the matter. Christ knew what 
the world needed. He knew that this was what 
it needed ; and because he knew that this was the 
one omnipotent power to save men, and all men, 
he therefore gave this command, and emphasized 
it as his last words on earth and his standing order 
to his Church to the end of time. Obedience to 
this command will save the world. 

"Can these bones live?" "Prophesy — 
preach," was the command, and the dry bones of 
the valley "stirred, and bone came to bone, and 
the skin covered them, and the breath came into 
them, and they stood up upon their feet, an ex- 
ceeding great army." So the world's valley of 
the dead can likewise live, and will live as men 
preach Christ as God has commanded. The 
Spirit's breath will sweep over the driest bones 
of heathenism and Islamism and barbarism and 
every false "ism," and the life of God will pulsate 
in their dead souls, and nations shall be born in 
a day. 

The missionary problem is not how to reach 



The Church 277 

the heathen abroad, but how to reach the unbe- 
lieving Church at home. Did Christian men be- 
Heve in the possibiHty of saving the world as they 
believe in the possibility of building a railroad, 
of exploiting a gold-mine, of running a vast com- 
mercial scheme, of doing any of the thousand dar- 
ing things of modern times? If they did, they 
could and would undertake the task. Men think 
nowadays that they can do almost anything, and 
they are pretty near right ; and when they come to 
think that the world can be brought to Jesus, and 
that it must be done, then it will be done. The 
word "impossible" is almost banished from the 
human vocabulary of our day. It ought to be 
banished from the Christian vocabulary too. 
"The things impossible with men are possible with 
God." The Church can obey Christ's command, 
and can trust in Christ's promise of the Holy 
Spirit's help; it can succeed in evangelizing the 
world. And the sooner this is done the better — 
the better for the Church itself. 

Christ's command had in view the highest in- 
terests of Christian men and women themselves. 
It can not be disobeyed or neglected without irrep- 
arable detriment to Christians themselves. On 



278 Christ the Apocalypse 

any other terms they can not rise to the highest 
elevation of Christian character; on any other 
terms they will deteriorate until they cease to be 
Christians at all. 

The world must be evangelized if for no other 
reason than to save the Church. The heathen 
must be Christianized if for no other reason than 
to save the Christians from being heathenized. 
We rise by lifting up others. We save ourselves 
by saving others. We must save the world 
through God's appointed means, or the stigma of 
dishonor and shame will rest upon us forever. 



CHAPTER XVI 
SABBATH 

/^HRIST is the Apocalypse of the Sabbath. 
^^^ '*The Sabbath was made for man, and not 
man for the Sabbath." We can not mend God's 
laws. If we try, our additions become plagues 
of our own creation; our subtractions are blot- 
tings from the book of life. All God's laws are 
founded in the necessities of human nature itself, 
as well as in the justice and goodness of God; 
and they are perfect in their adaptation to both. 

The Sabbath is not a burden, but a blessing. 
It was not made for a cross, but a crown of joy 
and honor. It is pre-eminently a human institu- 
tion. It is, as Christ says emphatically, "for man." 
It originated in the mind of God, and coeval with 
creation. "For in six days the Lord made heaven 
and earth, the sea and all that is therein, and rested 
on the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed 

tlie Sabbath-day and hallowed it." 

279 



28o Christ the Apocalypse 

The human body is a machine ''fear fully and 
wonderfully made." It is the masterpiece of the 
Great Architect, and is as remarkable for exquisite 
delicacy and beauty as for strength and endurance. 
The uses to which the human frame can be put 
are almost infinite in variety, and the possibilities 
of its utility impose the obligation of their realiza- 
tion, and form the only limit of their extent. God 
set us the example of work. Our privilege, our 
duty, our joy, our glory, is to work. But work 
means the wear and tear of vital forces. Certainly 
the body of man was never made for a living "per- 
petual motion." Periodic rest for the replacement 
of wasted energies is an indispensable condition 
of bodily life. No man can work twenty-four 
hours in the day, much less seven days in the 
week, still less fifty-two weeks in the year. 
Atheistic infidelity, grasping selfishness, idolatry 
of pleasure, tyrannical cruelty, have often striven 
to set aside the periodic seasons of rest, especially 
the Sabbath rest, but always with disastrous re- 
sults. The workingman — and that means, or 
ought to mean, every man — has no more cruel foe 
than he who, under any pretext whatever, would 
deprive him of his Sabbath. Neither the footpad 



Sabbath 281 

on the highway, nor the assassin in the dark, is 
a meaner or more deadly enemy than he. And 
the world is fast coming to believe this. 

With the development of modern progress, 
there is a faster rush of human activity every- 
where. Push, rapidity of action, decisive energy, 
mark our times as never before, and will probably 
do so in even greater ratio in time to come. We 
live intensely, and within rational limits it is right 
we should. But we all the more need rest, the 
Sabbath rest in particular, that God has mercifully 
given us. Thinking people begin to see as never 
before that Sabbath-keeping is a matter of life and 
death. If we do not keep the Sabbath rest, we 
shall perish as surely as the persistent defiance of 
the laws of nature always end in death. This is 
as true as regards mental as physical labor. The 
mind needs its rest as well as the body. Of the 
two, the brain very often has far harder work 
than the hand. In these days men have often to 
work hard with both at the same time. Never 
before in the history of mankind was mental work 
so exhausting with so large a proportion of hu- 
man beings. It is as impossible for men to keep 
up the awfully high pressure of mental activity 



282 Christ the Apocalypse 

without the Sabbath rest as for a steamboat to 
keep on running with its last ounce of pressure 
without an explosion. And the mental explosions 
come — plenty of them — and the wrecks are found 
in scores of our lunatic asylums. 

"The Sabbath was made for man." Man has 
his moral obligations, relations, and possibilities. 
The power to labor with skilled hands is noble; 
the power to think high thoughts is nobler; the 
power to know and appreciate and love God is 
noblest of all. The soul is the man, and the chief 
characteristic of the soul is that it bears the image 
of God. We are sons and daughters of the Lord 
Almighty, fallen and estranged through sin, but 
brought within reach of renewal and restoration 
to the Divine favor through Christ. Our most 
important business on earth is to get back to right- 
eousness and peace with God, that we may be 
friends with him forever. Anything short of this 
robs life of all its chief value, and strips the fu- 
ture of all its glorious hopes. If we live up to 
our nature, we must live to God; and to do this 
there must be adequate opportunities and special 
help provided. We can not mount aloft from the 
pit of sin into a clear atmosphere of good living 



Sabbath 283 

without very special facilities, and God has gra- 
ciously provided these and all we need. 

Besides the redemption by Christ and the grace 
of the Spirit, God has given us the Sabbath — 
one day in seven for the soul, that, while the body 
rests from toil, we may give attention to the most 
important of all needs of our nature, the moral 
and spiritual. The human memory can forget 
with amazing facility even God himself. We need 
to have our obligations and duty to God and man 
placed before us with the greatest frequency, clear- 
ness, and urgency. We need the constant stimulus 
of Christian thought, meditation, and prayer. 
We need the encouragement of mutual Christian 
help, and the quickening of close and constant 
association with God's children. We need to get 
near to God in worship, in personal communion 
with him, and in the frequent renewal of our en- 
gagements to be his faithful children. We need to 
think often and long on the reality of the eternal 
existence to which we are hastening on every day, 
and which very soon we shall enter upon. We 
need to keep steadily in view the final account 
we must render at the bar of God in the last judg- 
ment-day. Surely one day in seven is not too 



284 Christ the Apocalypse 

much to devote to such momentous concerns as 
these, besides all the spare hours or moments that 
can be gleaned from the pressing duties of every- 
day life. 

Besides, it never pays to break the Sabbath. 
The man who keeps the Sabbath for its highest 
spiritual ends is the man best fitted for his six 
days' toil of body or mind. Such a man is at 
his best, and will last the longest. The experience 
of all past ages has taught this lesson — a lesson 
hard to learn, but a lesson better learned to-day 
than ever. Christ's Apocalyptic Sabbath — the 
Sabbath for man — is the sure Sabbath yet for the 
world. 



CHAPTER XVII 
WOMAN 

CHRIST is the Apocalypse of woman, of her 
worth and work. What are woman's 
rights? That depends upon what she herself is. 
Christ has settled that forever. To the Pharisees, 
who had so vastly lowered the moral status of 
woman that they actually asked Christ the ques- 
tion, "Is it lawful for a man to put away his 
wife?" Christ referred them back to the creation, 
to the essential oneness of man and woman, not- 
withstanding the distinction of sex which God 
there ordained. 

When God said, "Let us make man," it was 
the generic man that was meant, embracing the 
whole human nature and the whole human race. 
The destruction of sex was not intended to de- 
tract in the least from any essential attribute of 
this humanity, nor will it in the end, for Christ 
declared that "in the resurrection they neither 

285 



286 Christ the Apocdypse 

marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the 
angels of God in heaven." The woman God gave 
to Adam was neither a despot nor a slave, but a 
being in all respects the counterpart of himself — 
his other self. Woman is neither more nor less 
than man, because she is man; as the Hebrew 
strongly puts it, *'the female man," or even our 
own vigorous anglo-Saxon, "woman," which is 
almost synonymous with the Hebrew word. The 
inferiority of woman to man in any essential re- 
spect is as absurd as that the right eye is es- 
sentially inferior to the left, or the soul is in- 
ferior to the spirit. What God has joined to- 
gether — this indissoluble equality of the sexes — 
let no man put asunder. 

This identity of the highest human qualities 
in man and woman does not destroy the specific 
characteristics of either. Sex is a real distinction. 
Woman is human nature with her own set of 
qualities. Her physical form is as distinct in its 
more delicate mold, finer outline, and softer love- 
liness, as is man's in robustness and rugged maj- 
esty. Her mind is as intuitive in its perceptions 
as is man's in elaborate logic. Her heart is as 
much the throne of love as man's head is of reason. 



Woman 287 

Her nature is humanity adapted to the majesty 
of motherhood as much as is man's to that of 
government. Both in a degree have a sphere of 
their own. As a rule, each will do best to keep 
to that sphere. At the same time we must not 
w^iden too much the peculiar province of man, 
while we narrow too much that of woman. Be- 
cause woman's physical and even mental nature 
is specially fitted for domesticity and motherhood, 
it does not follow that she is a whit less intel- 
lectual than man. She may have finer tastes, but 
no less firm convictions than he. She may have 
more heart, but no less head than he. It is an 
old theory that the heart is inferior to the head ; 
that to reason is a nobler faculty than to love. 
But it is false. God's noblest attribute is love, 
and love is the greatest, the most influential of 
all the Christian graces. Woman's great power 
to love means her great power to think and do 
grandly and well — if only used aright. Woman's 
rights — are they not therefore all essential rights 
that are human and all human rights that corre- 
spond with her individual nature as shaped by 
the hand of God? All Christ's teaching, direct 
and indirect, regarding woman is based on this 



288 Christ the Apocalypse 

principle, and all his treatment of woman was 
conducted on the same principle. 

The utmost possibility of woman's work and 
worth the world scarcely yet knows, because she 
has never yet had her full opportunity. All 
through the ages her freedom has been abridged, 
her faculties restricted, and her capacity doubted. 
Notwithstanding this, she has never ceased to 
demonstrate how superb in degree and how im- 
mense in variety is the endowment of her nature. 
The dignity of motherhood so impressed Adam 
that it gave rise to the first woman's name, "Eve, 
the mother of all living." The grandeur of this 
faculty is everywhere set forth in Scripture with 
an emphasis, a conspicuous circumstantiality and 
plainness of speech, not always quite agreeable to 
hypocritical and prudish ears. Its climax is 
reached in the birth of Christ and the motherhood 
of Mary. The coronet of majestic glory that sits 
on Mary's brow, and in which man can have no 
share, has so dazzled the race that it has been mis- 
taken for Divinity itself, and so she has been 
idolatrously worshiped as the "Queen of Heaven." 

The wifehood of woman is exhibited in 
Scripture in its deepest philosophy and most il- 



Woman 289 

lustrious examples. That almost inscrutable unity 
of the sexes involved in the basal principle of 
marriage, "Therefore shall a man leave his father 
and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they two 
shall be one flesh," runs throughout the sacred 
page until its sublimest altitude of possibility is 
reached in the New Testament utterance, ''Hus- 
bands, love your wives as Christ loves the Church, 
and gave himself for it." 

High and varied were the functions of women 
in the Old Testament time. It can not be for- 
gotten that next to the prince of darkness woman's 
moral lapse was the most potent agency in the 
introduction of sin into our world. Dark and 
terrible, indeed, is the portraiture of the very few 
bad women of the Bible. The world shudders, 
and ever will, at the natures of a Jezebel and a 
Herodias. But the historic women of the Bible, 
and their work, as a rule, are not bad, but good. 
Did Noah with unique fidelity and moral nerve 
pass through that most fearful of all earth's 
cataclysms, the Deluge? There w^as one other 
who as honorably and as ably passed through it 
too; that was his wife, with the additional honor 
that she did not get drunk on the first wine made 
19 



290 Christ the Apocalypse 

under the new order of things. Did the Father 
of the Faithful receive from God the highest 
patent of nobihty in his new title, "The Father 
and Prince of many nations ?" His wife, in God's 
esteem, was worthy of similar honor, and became 
at the same time ''the Mother and Princess of 
many nations." Was Moses one of the greatest 
emancipators and legislators of any age? It 
would be hard to estimate his debt of obligation 
to the intelligence, courage, and piety of his noble 
mother, and to the generous training of the more 
than princely daughter of Pharaoh. Did those 
magnificent artificers, Bezaleel and Aholiab, 
construct the tabernacle with rare skill and 
beauty? They had able helpers in the clever and 
generous women of Israel, whose deft hands had 
spun the delicate fabrics of ''blue and scarlet and 
fine linen." Few rulers of Israel present so per- 
fect a combination of simplicity, purity, and fidel- 
ity as Samuel. But it was the heavenly nobility 
of his mother, Hannah, that lived within him. 
Did the distracted period of the "Judges" in 
Israelite history require in those semi-royal offi- 
cers great discretion, strength of purpose, and 
oftentimes high military talents? None of them 



Woman 291 

appear to greater advantage in all these respects 
than the woman, Deborah. What position could 
possibly demand a larger measure of sound sense, 
rare tact, fearless courage, and the most heroic 
self-sacrifice than that in which Queen Esther 
shines with such imperishable renown? The 
office of prophet was one of the most responsible 
and influential of all offices in the Hebrew Theoc- 
racy; yet a woman, the prophetess Huldah, did 
honor to that lofty station for years. When Jeru- 
salem's broken-down walls needed strong arms 
and brave hearts to rebuild them, Nehemiah 
found in the daughters of Shallum as ready and 
capable workers as any. 

More prominently still in the New Testament 
are woman's work and worth exhibited. It would 
be hard to overestimate the lofty virtues and po- 
tent moral influence of the two illustrious women 
whose characters are portrayed in the opening 
chapters of Luke — the mother of the Baptist and 
the mother of Jesus. Mary's sweet "magnificat" 
is an immortal ode, with poetry and piety enough 
for a choir of archangels to sing. Did the Babe 
of Bethlehem pass unnoticed by the magnates of 
the Sanhedrin, he was saluted in the Temple right 



292 Christ the Apocalypse 

royally by a nobler personage than any of them, 
the venerable and saintly Anna. Among all the 
important things Christ might have selected to 
honor in the opening miracle of his mission, he 
chose the marriage-scene at Cana of Galilee. 

The carping Pharisee uttered wrathful mur- 
murs while the disciples chafed the ears of corn 
for a meal, but the benevolent and thoughtful 
women of Galilee "ministered unto Jesus of their 
substance." No faith in Israel excelled the te- 
nacious and all-conquering faith of the Syro- 
phenician woman. None excelled in liberality the 
widow in the temple, "who gave all that she had, 
even all her living." Christ had no disciples 
whose love for him surpassed in intensity, self- 
sacrifice, and fidelity that of the Marys. Did the 
Man of Sorrows occasionally taste the sweet re- 
pose of a congenial home? It was in the house of 
Martha and Mary and Lazarus. No woman is 
recorded in the Gospels as having persecuted 
Christ or aided in the wicked plots that culminated 
in his crucifixion. 

" Not she with traitorious kiss her Master stung ; 
Not she denied him with unfaithful tongue ; 
She, when apostles fled, could danger brave, 
lyast at his cross, and earliest at his grave." 



Woman 293 

Even the heathen wife of Pilate gave him 
more sensible and humane advice than all the dig- 
nitaries and courtiers that surrounded him : "Have 
thou nothing to do with that just Man." It was 
not to impulsive Peter, nor even loving John, that 
the risen Savior first appeared, but to Mary Mag- 
dalene, and to her was the apostolic commission 
intrusted, *'Go to my brethren, and say unto 
them I ascend to my Father and your Father, and 
to my God and your God." The first European 
convert to Christianity was a woman, the gentle 
Lydia. One of the foremost philanthropists 
named in the New Testament was another woman, 
the large-hearted Dorcas. One whole epistle of 
the New Testament is addressed to a woman, the 
elect lady to whom St. John directed his Second 
Letter. The corruption of the Church in its most 
terrific forms 'S symbolized in both dispensations 
by a fallen woman, the Aholah and Aholibah of 
the Old Testament, and the Scarlet Prostitute of 
the New. But the Church of Christ, in its most 
exalted purity and completest beauty, is symbol- 
ized as his Bride, and even heaven's final glory 
as the "marriage of the Lamb." 

Woman, as a teacher and preacher, is dis- 



294 Christ the Apocalypse 

tinctly recognized in the Scriptures. The prophets 
of both dispensations were preachers of righteous- 
ness. Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, were samples 
of women prophet-preachers under the law. 
Anna, and the four daughters of Philip the evan- 
gelist, were similar samples in the New Testa- 
ment time. One of the glories of the Mosaic Dis- 
pensation was the dissemination of Divine truth. 
That woman had a share in that work is very 
clearly stated in the eleventh verse of the sixty- 
eighth Psalm. The Revised Version translates 
it, "The Lord giveth the word; the women that 
publish the tidings are a great host." The same 
thing, only in vastly enlarged degree, was to mark 
the dispensation of the Holy Spirit : *'And it shall 
come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will 
pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh; and your 
sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your 
young men shall see visions, and your old men 
shall dream dreams, and on my servants and on 
my handmaidens I will pour out of my Spirit, and 
they shall prophesy." This is both a prediction 
and a command. It is an announcement that 
women, filled with the Spirit of God, shall 
prophesy, shall preach, as a historic fact of the lat- 



Woman 295 

ter-day glory ; shall preach, because it is God's will 
they should. 

There is nothing contrary to this in St. Paul's 
restrictions on the women of the Corinthian 
Church. *Xet your women keep silence in the 
churches, for it is not permitted to them to speak," 
was the command to the Corinthians. This can 
not mean that no woman was ever to be permitted 
to teach or preach in the Church, since St. Paul 
gives directions to these very same people how 
women were to appear when they did teach and 
preach. 

In the eleventh chapter of the same epistle, 
and fifth verse, he says, ''Every woman that 
prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered 
dishonoreth her head." What he means by 
prophesying he explains in the fourteenth chapter 
and third verse, "He that prophesieth, speaketh 
unto men to edification and exhortation and com- 
fort." It would be a strange exegesis to make 
Paul say in one part of his epistle that when 
women spoke in public they must present a 
modest, becoming appearance, and in another 
that they must never presume to speak in public 
at all ! The fact is, St. Paul's prohibition is not 



296 Christ the Apocalypse 

directed against godly women filled with the Holy 
Spirit, declaring the truth, but against disorderly 
women, of whom the Corinthian Church seems 
to have had a large supply, and whose unseemly 
questions and clamorous behavior were disgrac- 
ing the public worship of God. The key to the 
whole chapter is in the last verse, "Let all things 
be done decently and in order." 

None of the apostles speak more appreciatively 
of the work and worth of Christian women than 
does Paul. His grateful command to the Philip- 
pian Church was, ''Help those women that labored 
with me in the gospel." His loving salutations 
to some of the most distinguished Christians in 
the Church at Rome include a goodly number of 
women. Mary, who bestowed much labor on us ; 
Junia, of note among the apostles ; Tryphena and 
Tryphosa, who labor in the Lord; the beloved 
Persis, who labored much in the Lord; Phoebe, 
our sister, a servant (a Blolkovos:) a deaconess of 
the Church at Cenchrea. 

Woman's high capacity for the grandest 
Christian work is prominently visible through all 
ages. During the first three centuries there are 
no nobler Christian characters nor Christian deeds 



Woman 297 

than those of women. These are immortaHzed 
in the tragic memories of the CoHseum at Rome, 
and in the tender epitaphs of its Catacombs. 

Even the darkest ages have still their Monicas 
— illustrious Christian women, whose labors of 
love the world can never repay. Few of the great 
and good men of all ages but have been indebted 
to a noble mother, wife, sister, or daughter as 
their greatest inspiration, their best teacher, or 
worthiest example. As some one has said, ''A 
man discovered America, but a woman equipped 
the voyage." So every effectual person is but 
another Columbus whose furnishing is owing to 
some self-sacrificing Isabella. 

Among heroes of the battlefield few ever ex- 
celled the Phocian women, who voted to perish 
in the flames rather than become the captives of 
the Thessalian warriors; the Maid of Orleans, 
who, at fifteen, routed the veteran columns of 
England, and led the trembling French monarch 
to his coronation ; Maria Theresa, who, at twenty- 
four, with a new-born babe at her breast, rode 
up the mount at Presburg, and, with waving 
sword, inspired her people to a successful resist- 
ance of Frederick the Great. 



298 Christ the Apocalypse 

Among sovereigns, few have ever reigned 
more royally than the uncrowned Queen of the 
American RepubHc, Martha Washington; than 
the majestic Queen Elizabeth; and, more worthily 
still, than she, the world-renowned Christian 
woman who for more than sixty-three years 
reigned over the British Empire, with a galaxy 
of splendid qualities, and a success it would be 
hard to parallel in all the annals of time. 

Among the fixed stars of authorship, the 
names of Felicia Hemans, Hannah More, Lydia 
Sigourney, Eliza Cook, Mrs. Browning, Harriet 
Beecher Stowe, and hosts of others, will shine 
immortally. It was Charlotte Elliott who wrote 
''Just as I am, without one plea." From the pen 
of Catharine Hankey came '^ I love to tell the 
story." Mrs. Adams is the author of "Nearer, 
my God, to Thee." Mrs. Hawks composed the 
beautiful hymn, "I need Thee every hour." Mrs. 
Baxter gave the Church ''Take the name of Jesus 
with you ;" Mrs. Codner, "Lord, I hear of showers 
of blessing;" Miss Havergal the immortal ode, 
"Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to 
Thee;" Mrs. Van Alstyne, "Safe in the arms of 



Woman 299 

Jesus;" Mrs. Prentiss, "More love to Thee, O 
Christ, more love to Thee." 

The ranks of philanthropists possess women's 
names, the peers of any : Sarah Martin and Eliza- 
beth Fry, the jail missionaries; Charlotte Bronte, 
the self-sacrificing daughter; Florence Nightin^ 
gale, Sister Dora, and Clara Barton, the hospital 
nurses; Grace Darling, the heroic deliverer; the 
Baroness Coutts, the princely giver. 

Among temperance orators and temperance 
reformers there are not many nobler names than 
those of Miss Frances Willard, of the United 
States, and Mrs. Felicia Youmans, of Canada. 

Methodism will ever turn with profoundest 
reverence to the memory of John Wesley, and 
with no less reverence to the memory of his noble 
mother, Susannah Wesley, to whom both Wesley 
himself, Methodism, and the whole Christian 
world owes a debt which increases in majestic 
grandeur as the ages pass by. In the long roll 
of workers in American Methodism, the name of 
Barbara Heck will live in honor for all succeed- 
ing time. In sublime saintliness, how few have 
ever transcended a Mrs. Fletcher, Emily Judson, 



300 Christ the Apocalypse 

Miss Havergal ! In all the missionary fields of 
the world, in every line of Christian philanthropy, 
everywhere where heroic Christian self-sacrifice is 
being required and glorious work for God is being 
done, there you will find women among the fore- 
most in willingness, capacity, and success. 

Christ's will is that woman should be thor- 
oughly equipped for her work. If that equip- 
ment is made to correspond with her capacities 
and powers, it must needs be grand indeed. 
Woman's own estimate of herself and her mission 
needs expanding and elevating. The horizon of 
her sphere, in her own view, has been bounded 
far too often by the totally inadequate limits of 
dress, mere aesthetics, and matrimony. It is right 
that woman should dress with taste, and even 
elegance. She is designed by nature to be the 
"lovely flower of humanity;" "a being of light," 
as Schiller enthusiastically says, "who scatters 
celestial roses wherever we stray." But to live 
chiefly, or very much, for the exhibition of merely 
ornamental graces, is a deep degradation of 
womanhood. Nor should she put matrimony in 
too conspicuous a place, as the all-important ob- 
ject in life — the "ultima thule" of her destination. 



Woman 301 

That is too often done, and it is a great mistake. 
What should we say of a man whose chief object 
in life was to get well married? Would not the 
manliness of such a man be heavily discounted? 
On what principle can a woman do the same thing, 
and deserve to sustain no similar loss of dignity 
and respect? 

Woman's bodily health is something of in- 
calculable value to herself and to the world. She 
can scarcely do too much, or sacrifice too much, 
for this "pearl of great price." Whatever of in- 
jurious fashion needs immolating on the altar of 
common sense; whatever of absurd conventional 
usage needs heroic rejection; whatever of the true 
laws of hygiene need vigorous adoption, — it will 
pay her a thousand-fold to do. The education of 
woman should be of the very highest and best 
sort, if for no other reason than the fact that 
there is no education in the world that she is in- 
capable of receiving and using. Women them- 
selves have too readily acquiesced in the idea that 
their education must be chiefly of an aesthetic char- 
acter. Very much of the higher education of 
women to this hour is based on that idea. The 
prominence given to the fine arts, the Romance 



302 Christ the Apocalypse 

languages, and the like, is out of all proportion 
to their relative value. What should be said of 
the education of a gentleman whose chief accom- 
plishments were that he was a capital fiddler and 
could speak Italian wxll? The true idea of edu- 
cation, as the word "educo" literally implies, is 
the leading out into thorough cultivation and suc- 
cessful use of all the powers of our nature. 
Women should never be satisfied with an educa- 
tion based on any narrower or less worthy prin- 
ciple than this. 

Religion, the religion of Christ in all its full- 
ness, efficacy, and blessedness, is woman's crown- 
ing glory. Education, ability, talent, even genius, 
with the grandest opportunities besides, without 
religion, are as the magnificent ship that has 
everything but the wind in its sails, the fire in 
its engines, and the captain on its deck. Christ 
alone can inspire, direct, and conduct to glorious 
success the splendid womanhood that is possible 
in this world. The heart of womankind ought to 
turn with boundless love to Jesus. He alone has 
broken the chains of her serfdom, and placed her 
firmly on her legitimate throne of influence. He 



Woman 303 

alone has taught the world what is the true 
peerage of woman in all human dignity, responsi- 
bility, and reward. Christ is the palladium of her 
safety, honor, and joy. In him, and in him alone, 
her nature can acquire its most perfect beauty, 
taste its divinest rapture, find its sweetest solace, 
develop its largest powers, bear its ripest fruits, 
and reap forever its most illustrious rewards. 

Never since the dawn of the Christian era was 
woman's work so much needed as now. It is 
needed for herself. All she can be in nobility and 
usefulness she ought to be. The best benedictions 
of Christian work are its reflex influence on our- 
selves. On the ladder of high and holy Christian 
effort she may mount to a more magnificent and 
perfected womanhood than the world has ever 
yet seen. Nor need mankind fear, but gladly wel- 
come, such a glorious Christian womanhood as 
this. Man's own elevation is bound up with hers. 
Nothing in all the ages has more degraded man 
than his unrighteous and cruel treatment of 
woman. In lowering her, he has infallibly 
lowered himself. Her elevation will be his ele- 
vation. Nor are we ever likely to see the highest 



304 Christ the Apocalypse 

type of manhood prevalent in the world until this 
legitimate and Christian exaltation of woman 
does take place as its most influential forerunner. 

Wherever else woman may shine with benefi- 
cent splendor, no sphere for her can ever surpass 
the home, the Christian home. That is her do- 
minion, and of which she is the crowned queen by 
Divine right. It is her privilege there to glorify 
the common offices of life, and she may well value 
the privilege. Under her magic touch the plastic 
spirit may be molded for its higher after-destiny. 
From her inspiring presence the brave soul may 
daily go forth to victory on the world's stern 
battlefields. On her tender heart care may un- 
load its heavy burdens. Her Christian love may 
make an atmosphere of sweetness, a sanctuary of 
rest which justifies all the wealth of association 
of those three tenderest of words and thoughts in 
the English tongue, Mother, Home, Heaven. 
Never before was the world so ready to revere 
and prize and surrender to the sweet dominion 
of the highest types of Christian wifehood and 
Christian motherhood. 

She is needed as the natural leader of society. 
That, too, must alwa3^s be an indisputable portion 



Woman 305 

of her dominion. The tone and manners of so- 
ciety are, and ever will be, very much as she 
dictates. She has the power to frown into hope- 
less disuse the absurd vanities, the costly extrava- 
gancies, the many questionable practices, in which 
society often indulges. She can smile into per- 
manent popularity the things that are sensible and 
modest and proper for our Christian civilization. 

The moral purity of society is likewise largely 
in her hands. She has the power to ostracize the 
libertine out of all decent society if she will The 
depths of infamy into which the fallen woman 
is consigned are largely of woman's own decree. 
She might place the male transgressor in even a 
lower stratum of disgrace, if she would, and that 
is undoubtedly oftentimes where he ought to be. 
The immoralities of the theater, the perilous 
frivolities of the dance, the dissipating novel, and 
multitudes of other pleasures of sin, would be 
next to impossible without the consent of woman. 

The doom of that omnipotent curse of Chris- 
tendom, the liquor-traffic, can be decisively pro- 
nounced from woman's lips. What between the 
rotten-hearted covetousness that for paltry gain 
consigns innumerable souls to deep damnation; 



306 Christ the Apocalypse 

the disgraceful dodges of corrupt politicians; the 
slippery legislation which is necessarily inopera- 
tive, or the sound legislation left in mockery to 
enforce itself ; the craven pandering of thousands 
to this giant iniquity because of its enormous 
wealth and influence, — the true lords of the race 
are in danger of turning sick with disappoint- 
ment and disgust. But he must never despair. 

" 'T is weary watching wave on wave, 

And yet the tide heaves onward ; 
We build like corals, grave on grave, 

But pave a pathway sunward. 
We are beaten back in many a fray, 

But newer strength we borrow, 
And where the vanguard rests to-day. 

The rear shall camp to-morrow." 

We turn in hope to the living God above us, 
and to the women, the Christian women of the 
world, and to their children. It is they who have 
done the least to bring this curse upon us, who 
have suffered most from its ravages, and who can 
best deliver us from its yoke. 

Woman is needed as the public advocate of 
truth and righteousness. If God sends a female 
orator into the world, she certainly has a mission. 
If some of the attributes of effective oratory are 



Woman 307 

a commanding presence, facile speech, fervid 
imagination, keen perception, pathetic tenderness, 
and subtle, magnetic power over an audience, then 
assuredly the male sex can claim no monopoly of 
such powers. There are many women gifted in 
all these respects in the very highest degree. They 
could sway an auditory with regal powers of 
speech. And if they can, why should they not? 
By all means, let them do it. Every such woman 
is sorely needed in the desperate battle with error 
and sin. 

The literary talents of women have hardly yet 
been duly appreciated and acknowledged. Men 
have self-complacently appropriated this field 
pretty much to themselves, as if by right. But 
the very nature of woman presupposes and 
predicts the highest literary gifts. Her powerful 
intuitions of fundamental truths ; her vivid fancy ; 
her passionate hatred of the false and mean, which 
is even stronger frequently than in man ; her deli- 
cate taste; her worship of the beautiful and the 
good; her intensity of love; her overflow of lan- 
guage, often coming with wonderful spontaneity 
and propriety ; and, above all, her superior moral 
sense and deep spirituality, — constitute a circle of 



3o8 Christ the Apocalypse 

gifts that conspire to authorship in no secondary 
degree. 

The world has plenty of room still left for 
majestic philosophers like Madam de Stael; for 
chaste and classic prose writers, like Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu; for elevated and imaginative 
authors, like Mrs. Barbauld; for great moralists, 
like Hannah More; for fiction writers, like Mrs. 
Stowe; for such sweet and captivating story- 
tellers as Amelia Barr and Pansy; for such ex- 
positors of the higher Christian life as Mrs. 
Phoebe Palmer. The misdirected genius of recent 
lady novelists, whose unworthy aim has been to 
sap the very foundations of our faith, call loudly 
for the vigorous use of Christian woman's pen. 
The best rejoinders to "John Ward, Preacher," 
and "Robert Elsmere," and the like, may yet come 
from Christian women. The occult skepticism 
and sinister hostility to Christ of such books may 
wake the mighty genius that slumbers in some 
Christian women's souls; and, if so, the world 
may see the birth of a new, if not more potent 
form of Christian apologetics than modern times 
has yet produced. If the world to-day is being 
ruled in no metaphorical sense by the pen, and the 



Woman 309 

power of written thought will more and more 
shape the destinies of mankind, then assuredly we 
can never afford to miss the splendid help of 
Christian woman's pen. 

As teachers of youth women will always find 
a peculiarly fitting and singularly useful sphere. 
The best training a child can ever have is at a 
Christian mother's knee. No teaching will ever be 
more impressive, abiding, and powerfully influ- 
ential than that. To the young heart truth will 
never seem more attractive and beautiful than 
from the lips of sweet and holy Christian woman- 
hood. The formation period of humanity, that 
most precious of all periods in human existence, 
is therefore woman's golden opportunity. 

To the sick and afflicted no nurses can ever 
equal women. In these sad fields of philanthropic 
labor Christian women have ever been, and ever 
will be, the very angels of humanity. If ever the 
slums of society are to be redeemed and Chris- 
tianized, it would seem that Christian women will 
have to be the chief instruments in the work. 
They are signally fitted for the task by their 
natural sympathy for the weak, the distressed, 
and the lost by their extraordinary capacity for 



3IO Christ the Apocalypse 

self-sacrifice, and by the very intrepidity of their 
nature ; for it is a fact that the moral courage of 
women often far outstrips that of men. 

To the women of the Church we owe im- 
mensely in helping to raise funds for all sorts of 
Christian enterprises. They have it in their power 
to reform and truly Christianize our system of 
Church finance. On them largely falls the burden 
of devising and executing the many tortuous and 
troublesome and — shall we say? — oftentimes un- 
worthy schemes for raising money. They can 
decide, if they will, that in future God's own plan 
shall be their plan; namely, that of voluntary, 
proportionate, and systematic giving. If the 
women of the Church will thus decide they will 
render one of the most magnificent services to 
the cause of Christ that has been rendered for the 
last hundred years. 

There are offices in the Church that women 
are eminently fitted to fill. The ancient office of 
deaconess is one of them. The New Testament 
distinctly indicates that women held this office in 
the apostolic age. The early fathers, such as Ter- 
tullian, Basil, and Chrysostom, show that women 
were set apart for this work by appropriate cere- 



Woman 311 

monies. They were the nurses, visitors, cate- 
chists, and supervisors of the morals of the female 
members of the Church. In many ways they 
were some of the most valuable helpers that those 
early Christian pastors and Churches had. The 
development, or rather degradation, of the ancient 
deaconess into the modern nun of the Church of 
Rome has probably helped to abolish this most 
useful class of Christian workers. But the popish 
abuse of a great and good thing is no valid reason 
why Protestants should not possess that great 
and good thing, without its abuse. To quote the 
words of another: "There are reformatories and 
poor-houses and orphanages — and there ought to 
be — all over the land. There are prisons and hos- 
pitals in every part of the country; and there are 
emigrants and waifs and Magdalens and strangers 
being lost in the whirl of the great cities. There 
are poor work-women and overburdened mothers 
whose children can be cared for while they secure 
employment or take a half-holiday's rest or recrea- 
tion. There are unschooled children to be gath- 
ered into night-schools, and sick people who want 
flowers as well as doctors, and who know little 
of human cheer and helpfulness. There are re- 



3 1 2 Christ the Apocalypse 

leased convicts to be aided; there are city chil- 
dren to be sent to good homes away from the 
filth and squalor and crime-schools of their sur- 
roundings. There are bootblacks and newsboys 
and street Arabs that will follow, fascinated, the 
gentle ministries of women." 

Turning to the heathen nations of mankind, 
it is difficult to see how the great missionary prob- 
lem can ever be successfully solved without 
w^oman's aid. There are tens of thousands of 
Eastern homes hermetically sealed to all male mis- 
sionaries, and will be for a long time to come. 
Into many such homes the right sort of female 
Christian missionary might find ready access. An 
army of Christian women educated as physicians, 
as well as Christian teachers, would be the most 
effective invasion of Eastern heathenism that 
could well be imagined. One such Christian 
woman in any of those countries is of herself a 
glorious revelation. No such woman is ever the 
product of any heathen system or of Mohammed- 
anism, nor ever can be. She is the special crea- 
tion of Christianity, and of Christianity alone. 
No more wonderful, convincing, and exceedingly 
attractive evidence of the Divinity of the Chris- 



Woman 3 1 3 

tian religion, and of its transforming power, can 
be given them than the presence in their midst of 
a pure and exalted womanhood like this. 

The outlook of woman and her work is grand 
indeed. The gross injustice of the ages is fading 
rapidly into the night of a bygone time. The un- 
reasonable fetters that have detained her from her 
lofty mission are fast dissolving. The exegesis 
of the Holy Word, so often made to do duty in 
keeping her disfranchised still, is being rectified 
under the clearer light and juster criticism of 
modern knowledge. The world begins to beckon 
her onward and upward, and splendidly is she 
responding. 

''What unused and unguessed resources have 
been lying hid which woman's work to-day is 
calling out and sending on missionary errands 
around the world ! It is the dawn of a new day, 
and there scarcely has been a brighter since the 
angels made the Judean air thick with melody 
at the birth of Jesus. It looks, after all, as if a 
great strategic point in the warfare for the su- 
premacy of Christ in the world were the heart of 
woman." 

Woman herself is startled to see what she can 



314 Christ the Apocalypse 

do. Her success has taught her a lesson she will 
never forget. Only let her be true to her Savior, 
and never fear to tread with unfaltering step each 
path of duty when he leads her on, and the bright 
success of her work is assured. Whatever hostile 
ungodliness many inspire, or even mistaken ob- 
jections the too Churchly Churchman may utter, 
the Master will value aright all the loving offer- 
ings of her heart, and will triumphantly vindicate 
her before the universe, while he pronounces, as 
of old, the blessed words, "She hath done what 
she could." 



SECTION IV 

Cl^e futuvt 



CHAPTER I 
THE WORLD'S OUTLOOK 

'T^HERE is a great deal of modern hostility 
■•" to Christianity. That is no discredit to 
Christianity. It would be much more discredit- 
able to its very fundamental principles if there 
were none. For "the carnal mind is enmity 
against God; for it is not subject to the law of 
God, neither indeed can be;" that is, the philos- 
ophy of unbelief, and of all hostility to Christ. 
If the carnal mind were universally replaced by 
the renewed nature which the Holy Spirit creates, 
there would be no further hostility to Christ or 
his religion in the world. Until then it will cer- 
tainly exist in some form or other, and in vary- 
ing degrees of virulence. 

But mere hostility to Christianity can never 
ultimately damage Christianity. The fires of 
mere hatred and malice are sure to burn them- 
selves out at last, and truth comes out in the 
317 



3 1 8 Christ the Apocalypse 

end brighter and stronger than ever. If Chris- 
ftianity has nothing to fear but truth — and it has 
) nothing else to fear — then its final triumph is as 
certain as anything can be. Certainly men have 
a right to ascertain what is true Christianity, and 
nothing less, and nothing more. If they assail 
the mere human accretions that ignorance or pride 
or selfishness have superimposed on Christian 
truth, they do the most real service to Christian- 
ity itself. Even the most hostile assaults of skep- 
ticism have materially helped to arouse the ac- 
tivities of honest investigation, and sharpened the 
powers of Christian thought. Not one of the 
modern forms of assault on Christianity but has 
its hopeful and beneficent side, no matter what the 
\ assailants may intend. 

^'"^ Socialism, even in its worst forms, is helping 
to unearth the hoary tyrannies that have ground 
to the dust countless myriads of the race, and is 
inevitably directing attention to the only solution 
possible in the teaching and practice of Him who 
is our Divine Brother. Rationalism, as a revolt 
against unreasoning dogmatism, has helped to re- 
place reason in its proper judgment-seat, and from 
that same judgment-seat has it been condemning 



The World's Outlook 319 

that very rationalism whose missing Hnk of moral 
power, it is felt, must necessarily be supplied. 
Skepticism, risen for the thousandth time into the 
storm-clouds of negation, drops its thunderbolts. 
By their lurid light are revealed some weak 
strategic points in Christian apologetics, which 
will assuredly be fortified against further attack. 
The Higher Criticism which, in some hands, / 
would lay the exegetical ax to the very root of 
the tree of authoritative truth, is discovering that 
its only execution is on the fungus growths and 
parasitical accretions of the Tree of Life. It can 
not injure the vital trunk and roots of that Tree, 
even if it would, and the true exegesis would not, 
even if it were tempted to imagine that it could 
Ritualism strives for the renaissance o 
mediaeval worship, but only effectually resurrects 
some aesthetic good things that the world never 
should have lost, and exhibits the charnel-house 
of a dead past, only in the end to emphasize more 
fully the beauty and grandeur of the true spiritual 
life of man. Literature has been enlisted, as never 
before, to crush religion out of existence in the 
world ; but its principal effect is the awakening of 
the Christian press to a far more energetic, wide- 



\ 



320 Christ the Apocalypse 

spread, and effective propaganda of Christianity 
than was ever beHeved possible before. Every 
modern advance in scientific discovery, mechanical 
invention and progressive appliance, has been 
eagerly turned to account against religion, which, 
in turn, has taught the Christian world what 
powerful instruments all these are to spread 
Christ's religion triumphantly to the ends of the 
earth — a lesson which is being readily learned and 
vigorously practiced. 

Christ and his religion have withstood the 
shock of ten thousand battles throughout the long 
ages without flinching a hair's-breadth, or sus- 
taining what has proved to be a single genuine 
defeat. The result is summed up in a broader, 
deeper, juster, intenser, more universal loyalty to 
him and his religion than ever existed before. 
Let the hostile forces now existing come on; let 
them make what assaults they can, and all they 
can, and as long as they can. It will be all the 
better for Christ and his truth in the end. Out 
of all this chaotic confusion and conflict of 
thought will come a more orderly moral world, 
filled with the beauty and glory of Christ, and 



The World's Outlook 321 

filled with a more noble and Christly race of men 
and women, created anew in Christ Jesus. 

"I, if I be lifted up on the cross, will draw 
all men unto me." After the lapse of nineteen 
centuries of the Christian era have these words of 
Jesus been entirely fulfilled? No. Is there any 
prospect now of their ever being entirely fulfilled ? 
Yes, indeed. Christianity has final victory 
wrapped up in itself. Its very nature presages 
and assures its universal conquest. Christ must 
reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. 
And his enemies are fast being subjugated to- 
day — much faster than in any former age. 

The present influence of Christianity in the 
world can not be measured by tabulated statistics 
and arithmetic calculations no more than you can 
measure in that way the dawn of the morning or 
the sunshine of noonday. Christ has already more 
or less penetrated and interpenetrated every re- 
ligion in the world, every philosophy, every po- 
litical system, every region of human activity or 
enterprise, every nation and people, everywhere. 
In a degree, Jesus Christ has already drawn all 
men unto him. Derelict forms of Christianity, 



322 Christ the Apocalypse 

like those of the Greek and I^atin Churches, are 
not what they once were. They are, in large de- 
gree, dead systems of a dead past. It matters 
little what laws are on their ecclesiastical statute- 
books, what principles they stubbornly refuse to 
change, or that they write on the medisevalism of 
the past, "semper eadem/' — the world moves, and 
Christianity is its lever, and they have to move 
with it. The inflexible spiritual despotism of 
Hildebrand and Innocent III is a thing impossible 
in practice now. The terrorism of the Inquisition 
can not be repeated in any nation on earth. The 
distinctive principles of the Reformation — liberty 
of conscience and the freedom of human intelli- 
gence in the acceptance of things spiritual — is 
preached from Romish pulpits and emphasized in 
papal edicts. Rome is glad enough to accept for 
herself and her children the Protestant liberties 
which Protestant England and America accord to 
all men. These free countries may be heretical 
according to Romish standards, and so far ex- 
posed to all the theoretical anathemas of mediaeval 
popery, but it is a most beneficent heresy, under 
whose fostering wings many millions of Roman 



The World's Outlook 323 

Catholics are glad enough to take shelter, and 
whose praises they are no way backward to pro- 
claim. 

Can it be doubted, either, that multitudes of 
Romanists sincerely believe that such liberties are, 
after all, best for mankind? The logic of facts 
has surely left its conviction of truth upon their 
minds, notwithstanding all the spiritual theories 
of their religious system. This means that there 
is a Protestantism within these Churches as well 
as without; that is, that original Christianity has 
made vast inroads in every direction in these sys- 
tems, whether they acknowledge it or not. This 
is also true of Mohammedanism, which is perhaps 
the most inflexible and fanatical of all false re- 
ligious systems in the world. There must be some 
immense modification in this religious system, else 
the world could never behold the spectacle of one 
of the most advanced Protestant and most emi- 
nently Christian nations — the British — being at 
the same time by far the most numerous and 
greatest Mohammedan Empire in existence. 
Neither the Sultan of Turkey, nor all other Mo- 
hammedan rulers in the world combined, can com- 



324 Christ the Apocalypse 

pare in numerical strength and potency of rule 
with the eminently Christian sovereign of Eng- 
land. 

If Mohammedanism had not changed, or at 
least Mohammedans themselves had not changed, 
this could not exist for a day. The contentment 
of these vast multitudes of the followers of Islam 
under pre-eminent Christian rule, both in its 
cause and its effects, proclaims the advance of 
Christianity among these people. They are satis- 
fied, and more than satisfied, to abide under the 
dominion of Christian England, because of that 
very freedom and justice which their own religion 
denies to all others, and which Christian England 
maintains for them at all costs; and the effect of 
this could be no other than the conquest of their 
admiration of such ideas and practices, in spite 
of all the essential despotism of their own religion. 

An illustration of this is the remarkable re- 
ligious revolution in Persia, called Babism, which, 
it is said, has obtained a following of three mil- 
lions out of a total of seven millions in Persia 
proper. Babism is a protest against the morally 
enslaving pressure of Islamism, and inculcates as 



The World's Outlook 325 

its two main principles the union and sympathy 
of the whole human race — two principles as emi- 
nently Christian as they are emphatically anti- 
Mohammedan. The same thing is true likewise 
as respects Judaism. The fundamental idea of 
Judaism in its attitude to Christianity is that 
Jesus Christ was not the Messiah, but an im- 
postor. Christians — not Christianity — have for 
ages helped to foster the Jewish belief in this re- 
spect ; for the history of the Jew, as a whole, has 
been a history of Christian persecution in all its 
darkest, most revolting and terrible forms. The 
Jew has had little chance to see true Christianity 
in action in the world. What he has seen under 
the Christian name has been, for the most part, 
a travesty of the vilest sort, and a slander of the 
most malignant kind. But true Christianity in 
modern times has at last asserted itself. Here 
again Christian England and America have been 
the pre-eminent exponents of what the religion 
of Jesus really is. In Great Britain and her 
colonies and in the United States the Jew is as 
safe as he is free. The extraordinary contrast 
between his treatment in almost all other coun- 



326 Christ the Apocalypse 

tries can not possibly have failed to impress him 
favorably towards, at least, Anglo-Saxon Chris- 
tianity. 

Persecution is as powerless to convince men 
as kindness is powerful to do it, and the Good 
Samaritan humanity of Britain and America to 
the Jew has undoubtedly deeply affected him. By 
profession he is no nearer accepting Christianity 
than ever. But the modification of his bitterness 
towards Christ and his religion is evidenced in 
the reformations that are in progress within Juda- 
ism itself, in the courteous and even kind lan- 
guage he uses in speaking of Christ, in the direct 
or indirect acknowledgment he makes of the good 
he thinks that there is in Christianity, and in the 
fact that he is far more accessible to Christian 
missionary work than ever before, and that multi- 
tudes of Jews have, in our own age, cordially ac- 
cepted Christ, and, like Paul, now preach the 
faith they once labored to destroy. 

The truth is, that Jesus has mightily affected 
the oldest and most powerful heathen religions of 
the world. The heathen systems of India and 
China and Japan are no longer the impregnable 
fortresses of superstition that they have been for 



The World's Outlook 327 

untold centuries. Outwardly, they may show as 
massive a front as ever, but within and under- 
neath them Christianity has done a tremendous 
undermining, which daily increases in vigor and 
extent. Japan is a signal instance of how rapidly 
and powerfully this disintegrating process is at 
work. The direct agency of Christian missions is 
only one force which makes for the Christianiz- 
ing of the heathen nations. Christian civiliza- 
tion in its manifold ramifications and subtle in- 
fluences is exerting an incalculable and ever-in- 
creasing power in bringing the world to Christ. 
The intermingling of men through trade re- 
lations ; the growing international relations of all 
men with each other; the increase of arts and 
sciences and discoveries and conveniences which 
no one people can, for long, monopolize ; the bent 
of the age to fraternize and associate through 
travel and the interchange of good offices and the 
acquisition of languages, and especially the con- 
stant tendency towards one common language for 
the world, which all signs point to as the English 
tongue, — these, and many other considerations 
connected with the onward march of the highest 
form of Christian civilization, and which in- 



328 Christ the Apocalypse 

variably brings with it freedom and justice and 
good will as its crowning glories, can not fail, 
and does not fail, to speak aloud for Christ and 
his holy religion, which is at the root of it all. 

But, more than all, Christ is his own greatest 
advocate, his own best recommendation to men. 
"I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." 
Christ himself, and especially his cross, is 
heaven's most irresistible magnet to attract the 
love of the world. The character of Jesus is the 
most sublimely beautiful thing known to man. 
All ages and generations have bowed before its 
majesty. Its charms have captivated the heart 
alike of savage and sage. There is something 
in its wonderful intermingling of tenderness and 
strength, of loftiness that touches the heavens and 
lowliness that walks in every plane of life — so 
just, so wise, so generous, so good, so pure, so 
sweet — and over all its shining and transparent 
glories such unspeakable love, such unalloyed 
truth, and yet, exhaust as we may the whole 
catalogue of noble and admirable and beautiful 
elements of character possible to our conception, 
and all of which Jesus had, there still remains 
a holy fascination in him which no language can 



The World's Outlook 329 

describe nor our own thought can formulate; but 
it is there, with its mystic, its mighty, its irresist- 
ible power over our hearts. 

To know Jesus Christ is to love him. This 
is true, not only of the believer who has found 
life and salvation through faith in his name; it is 
also true of all men. The darkest and most viru- 
lent ages of infidelity have found little to say 
against Jesus. The most hostile enmity of the 
wicked against righteousness have scarcely ven- 
tured to disparage him. Men to-day, who care 
nothing for the Church or religion, can quote his 
words with profound respect, and hold up his ex- 
ample to the rest of mankind. 

Introduce Jesus to the heathen, and he wins 
his own way. It is the illumination of the Holy 
Spirit lighting up the character of Christ that 
catches the heathen eye and captives his heart, and 
that is the great secret, and no other, of the suc- 
cess of all modern Christian missions. As 
Christ's character is the world's great spiritual 
attraction of gravitation towards goodness, God, 
and heaven, so the cross of Christ is the mightiest 
attractive power in Christ's character. It is here 
where all lines of excellence concentrate, and 



330 Christ the Apocalypse 

where their powers gather in overwhelming 
strength. 

The cross was the symbol of infamy. It was 
meant to stamp Jesus with a disgrace ineradicable 
and everlasting. It was the last and most ex- 
haustive effort of malignity to bury Jesus for- 
ever under a mountain of shame and reproach 
and dishonor. But there is a sense of justice in 
the human soul, and men asked then, and have 
been asking ever since, "Why, what evil hath he 
done?" The mountain of shame and disgrace 
failed to bury Jesus, but it did not fail to bury 
the character of the men who did this act in in- 
famy deep as hell, wide as the world, and lasting 
as eternity. The unutterable injustice of the cross 
drew the gaze of mankind to the Prince of 
Martyrs who hung there, and, as they have looked 
on the heroic Sufferer, their admiration has grown 
from age to age in proportion as their indigna- 
tion has burned against the venomous rage that 
nailed him to the cross. Jesus is the world's 
greatest Hero-Martyr, and, if he were nothing 
more, the world will worship him forever. 

But men have never been able to gaze long 



The World's Outlook 33 i 

on the dying Jesus as merely the most ilkistrious 
of martyrs. That is but a step towards the mystic, 
the deeper thought that breaks in upon their awe- 
stricken souls — the sacrificial atoning nature of 
his death. When men begin to realize this, all 
other thoughts are swallowed up, even their right- 
eous indignation against the Jew who crucified 
him is almost forgotten, and their admiration and 
love expands and keeps expanding until it reaches 
a boundless height and depth and amplitude 
which the overwhelmed heart can feel, but no 
tongue can describe. 

The world's movement towards Christ to-day 
predicts and necessitates a much nearer advance, 
a much more loyal and widespread obedience to 
him as King of kings. The immediate future is 
certainly Christ's, and its remoter future is cer- 
tainly altogether his. No matter what ebbs may 
occur in the tide of human progress, its flow is 
steadily onward towards the Christian ideal. Na- 
tions may be in the throes of dissolution — many 
of them are — because the world refuses to go back 
to the inertia of mediaeval or ancient ignorance 
and folly. They will die as all effete things do, 



332 Christ the Apocalypse 

but they can spring to life out of their ashes, and 
no doubt will, but only as they receive a mighty 
infusion of Christian energy and power. 

The day for the supremacy of political des- 
potisms is evidently past. With a fourth, indeed, 
almost a third, of the human race in the enjoy- 
ment of liberty — for where the British or Amer- 
ican flags wave there is liberty, the best that men 
have ever possessed — it will be hard to keep the 
other two-thirds in bondage. It will be impos- 
sible. It is only a matter of time — and a brief 
period of time at that — when every political abso- 
lutism in the world will have disappeared forever. 
No nation with the New Testament in their hands 
and in their hearts has ever yet been permanently 
enslaved, nor ever will be. The time is fast ap- 
proaching when all nations will possess the New 
Testament; and to possess it means that it will 
possess them. 

The giant tyrannies of the world are doomed. 
The slave-trade, the opium-trade, the liquor-trade, 
the trade in lust, the gambling-trade, — giants they 
all are, but giants condemned to be hanged, every 
one of them. And they will be hanged. Selfish- 
ness may demand and obtain new trials and many 



The World's Outlook 333 

postponements of the day of execution ; but every 
new trial results in a fresh conviction more em- 
phatic than before. The conflict between right 
and wrong, evil and good, never was so sharply 
defined, so acute, so resolute as now. But the 
issue never before was so certain. All forms of 
evil are sure of final overthrow. 

The most terrific battles are yet to come. The 
apocalyptic vision of John on Patmos passes in re- 
view those last scenes when sin and Satan will 
fight desperately for existence. But the Lion of 
of the tribe of Judah will triumph. All the co- 
lossal forms of evil — mystic Babylon, the beasts 
with their many heads and horns of power, the 
congregated forces of Gog and Magog, the united 
strength of earthly and hellish malignity — will 
make the last stand, and go down to rise no more. 

This is Christ's world; for he made it, re- 
deemed it, is regenerating it, and will glorify it, 
purging away its dross, destroying its enemies, 
and never ceasing until he has made an end of its 
ruin and lifted it to heavenly exaltation and 
eternal blessedness. 



CHAPTER II 
JUDGMENT 

4 ' \^/'B must all appear before the judgment- 
^ ^ seat of Christ; that every one may re- 
ceive the things done in his body, according to 
that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." 

Christ is the Apocalypse of accountability. 
From the first man, Adam, to the last man of the 
human race, Christ has stamped accountability on 
all. This quality discriminates the human race 
from all other earthly beings, and is the crowning 
dignity of the Divine image in human nature. 
But this accountability has its limitations. "To 
whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much 
required." To the patriarchs who succeeded 
Adam, much was given; but more to Moses and 
the tribes of Israel ; still more to the prophets of 
later Jewish time; but immensely more when 
Christ appeared in person; much more still when 
the Holy Spirit's dispensation began; and most 
334 



Judgment 335 

of all, to us upon whom the ends of the earth 
have come freighted with the accumulated light 
of all past ages. Light will not cease to accumu- 
late still in future generations of men; and in 
those distant ages human accountability will be 
far heavier than on us to-day; and the account- 
ability of the last generation of the race will be 
the heaviest of all, because it will be the heir of 
the moral wealth of all previous ages. 

The most enlightened and best-behaved 
heathen who is "a. law to himself" is not as ac- 
countable as the least enlightened Christian, and 
the least enlightened Christian may be as account- 
able as the most enlightened Christian, when both 
have had an equal opportunity to get the light. 
We are accountable for what we do not know, 
but what we ought to know, and would have 
known but for our indifference and neglect of 
opportunity. We are accountable for the good 
we did not do, but which we could have done, 
and would have done had we tried. The judg- 
ment day began when Adam fell. It has con- 
tinued ever since. In every age God has never 
ceased to take judicial cognizance of the actions of 
men, and reward and punish them according as 



336 Christ the Apocalypse 

they deserved. Adam was not allowed to disobey 
unnoticed and unpunished. His punishment was 
swift, righteous, and adequate. Cain the mur- 
derer, Abel the faithful, each received his due rec- 
ompense at God's hands. God has never al- 
lowed sin to go unpunished, nor righteousness 
to go unrewarded. The history of man is the his- 
tory of God the Judge sitting in the High Court 
of Justice, and meting out to every man accord- 
ing to his works. 

There may be mysteries in this Divine judicial 
management, and there are ; there may be at times 
a long silence ere the lips of the Judge pronounce 
sentence, and that, too, has been the case; there 
may be what to short-sighted mortals, such as we, 
looks like neglect of justice, or oversight, or even 
unjust-appearing decisions — no matter; "shall 
not the Judge of all the earth do right?" "Justice 
and judgment are the very habitation or estab- 
lishment of his Divine throne; mercy and truth 
always go before his face." 

But have men received from the beginning 
their full reward, their full punishment? No; 
because the sum of their accountability has never 
been realized. No man's full accountability can 



Judgment 337 

be summed up till the end of time. We live, 
even in this world, after we die. Though dead, 
we can and do yet speak. No man liveth to him- 
self, and no man dieth to himself. There are 
men who have been dead hundreds of years do- 
ing more good to-day in the world than they 
ever did. There are men who have been dead 
hundreds of years who are doing more mischief 
in the world than they ever did. In both cases, 
they will do more good and more evil five hun- 
dred years from now than they are doing to-day. 
It is the final cumulation of character and its re- 
sults that will sum up the total account of each; 
and that can only be when time shall be no 
longer. 

Christ will be the Judge in that last great 
day. "The Father judgeth no man, but hath 
committed all judgment unto the Son." This 
ought to satisfy the human race. Christ is linked 
to our humanity by ten thousand ties. He knows 
us as one of ourselves. He was touched with a 
feeling of all our sinless infirmities. He under- 
stands the nature of all our temptations, weak- 
nesses, perils, from his own experience. We 
know his career on earth, his treatment of all 



33^ Christ the Apocalypse 

manner of sinners and all manner of saints. We 
know how just and merciful and gracious he ever 
was. We know that love was his supreme qual- 
ity. We expect nothing from him but what is 
in harmony with his life, his teaching, his suffer- 
ings, his death. And we will get nothing. Any 
one that deserves the least mercy will get it. Any 

one that deserves the least reward will get it. 
His throne of judgment is white, spotless as the 

purity of the eternal Jehovah. The sheep need 
not fear that they will be mistaken for goats ; and 
the goats may rest assured that they will not be 
mistaken for sheep. Nothing will be forgotten 
or lost. There will be no inaccuracy, no secrecy, 
no misunderstanding. It may take a thousand 
years, or twenty thousand, or two hundred thou- 
sand, to determine every case, to draw out and 
measure every record, to allot to every one what 
is due — no matter. God has plenty of time, and 
it will be done. It will be a day of surprises. 
There are last which shall be first in that day, and 
there are first that shall be last. 

''We have eaten and drunk in Thy presence, 
and Thou hast taught in our streets" will not be 



Judgment 339 

the ready passport to the skies that many ex- 
pected, as Christ will answer, ''I know you not 
whence ye are; depart, ye workers of iniquity." 
'* When saw we thee ahungered, or atliirst, or a 
stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did 
not minister unto thee?" "Inasmuch as ye did 
it not to one of the least of these my brethren, 
ye did it not to me.'* ^* I was ahungered, and 
ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me 
drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me in ; naked, 
and ye clothed me." "When, Lord? We never 
remember doing this. Surely there must be some 
mistake." "No, indeed; inasmuch as ye have 
done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, 
ye have done it unto me." 

That will be a new valuation put upon good 
deeds. That will be a new valuation put upon 
their sinful neglect. Our life here will then assume 
majestic proportions and inestimable worth that 
we little dream of now. Christ's decisions will 
meet with the approval of the assembled universe. 
His severest condemnations will come home to 
the condemned as the only righteous judgment 
that could be rendered. The wrath of the Lamb 



340 Christ the Apocalypse 

against evil will be shared by the countless myri- 
ads of accountable beings there. Even the wicked 
will burn with rage against themselves and Satan 
that deceived them. Righteousness will come 
forth in full-robed splendor; evil in all its detest- 
able enormity. 



CHAPTER III 
SIN'S LAST EVOLUTION 

/^^HRIST will say to the condemned, "Depart 
^-^ from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, 
prepared for the devil and his angels!" If there 
never was a hell before, this will make one. If 
there is no other hell, this will be hell enough. 

What is hell? It is banishment from God's 
presence and the glory of his power. Hell began 
in the Garden of Eden. Adam, cut off from God, 
deprived of God's favor, and bearing in his heart 
the sentence of God's condemnation and the con- 
demnation of his own conscience, had already 
tasted of the pangs of perdition. The antide- 
luvians, the Sodomites, the wicked kings of Israel, 
were already in hell — elementary hell. Multi- 
tudes of the heathen, ancient and modern, the 
polluted, vile, wicked of all ages and nations, have 
been in hell — elementary hell. All sin is hell — 
hell in germinal form. The final hell to which 

341 



342 Christ the Apocalypse 

the wicked must depart from Christ's judgment- 
seat is only the full fruition of earth's elementary 
hell. "There is first the blade, then the ear, then 
the full corn in the ear." 

Hell is evolved from sin, as the tree from the 
seed. If there was no acorn, there would be no 
oak. If there was no sin, there would be no hell. 
*'Ye cursed," Christ will say. That will include 
the curse of God, the curse of his fellow-man, 
the curse of man on himself for his sin, the curse 
of sin on itself, for sin is accursed of itself. All 
sin unites these curses, and in perdition they will 
flame forth in unrestrained fury. 

Hell is sin let loose in full-grown dominion. 
No earthly metaphors can portray hell as it is. 
The strongest figures are used in Scripture, but 
they are only shadows; the substance is immeas- 
urably worse. The misery of sin on earth is often 
indescribable indeed, sometimes almost incon- 
ceivable. How can we realize the misery of sin 
in the fullest perfection of its virus — in the largest 
measure of its unchecked power! A righteous 
and merciful God can no more bring condemned 
sinners into heaven at last, and make them happy 
there, than he can bring justified saints into per- 



Sin's Last Evolution 343 

dition at last, and make them miserable there. 
Both the one and the other would upset all his 
own laws stamped on the very nature of good 
and evil. The wicked can have no heaven any- 
where; the righteous can have no hell anywhere. 
The very nature of the evil would bring hell in 
its train, even in the heart of heaven. The very 
nature of good would bring heaven in its train 
in perdition itself. 

But will not perdition end some time? Cer- 
tainly; both heaven and hell may end some time, 
if Christ has said so. Nothing is impossible with 
God except to lie. Has Christ said that heaven 
will come to an end some time ? Has Christ said 
that hell will come to an end some time? Where 
has he said either the one or the other? He has 
said that the one will last as long as the other. 
''These shall go away into eternal punishment, 
but the righteous into eternal life." (Revised 
Version.) 



CHAPTER IV 
ABOVE 

' ' \ 1[ yE shall be like him, for we shall see him 
^ ^ as he is." x\dam in innocence dwelt in 
heaven, an earthly section of the heavenly para- 
dise; and heaven dwelt in him. The image of 
God, he was like God. The whole course of the 
Divine operation of grace is to bring back heaven 
into man, and man into heaven. Its final com- 
pletion will be at the judgment-seat of Christ. 
The moment a man is saved through faith in the 
Redeemer his heaven begins — elementary heaven. 
Each step afterwards makes a new stage in the 
blessed process. 

Death is one step. Christ is the Apocalypse 
of death. In Christ death died. He abolished 
death. Its sting is gone — sin. Its victory is no 
more. There is no death to the Christian. We 
sleep in Jesus. Christ's body was sown in cor- 

344 



Above 345 

ruption, which it never saw ; it was raised in in- 
corruption. It was sown in dishonor, it was 
raised in glory ; it was sown in weakness, it was 
raised in power; it was sown a natural body, it 
was raised a spiritual body. So will ours. Christ 
will change our vile body that it may be fashioned 
like unto his glorious body, according to the work- 
ing whereby he is able to subdue all things unto 
himself. That is the way the Christian dies into 
life — immortal life. 

Christ's saints will have royal beauty. Christ 
was the most beautiful man who ever lived, be- 
cause he was the most perfect man who ever 
lived. Christ's earthly perfection has been sub- 
limed into heavenly perfection, and that illus- 
trious beauty all his saints will share. Some faint 
idea of that perfection of beauty is suggested on 
the Mount of Transfiguration. 

The saints in heaven will scintillate with 
Christlike glory. Each will be so divine in ap- 
pearance as St. John's mistake indicates : '* I fell 
down to worship before the feet of the angel 
which showed me these things. Then saith he 
unto me. See thou do it not, for I am thy fellow- 
servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of 



346 Christ the Apocalypse 

them that keep the sayings of this book. Worship 
God." 

Royal wisdom, too, will be theirs. In Christ 
are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowl- 
edge. He will unlock these treasures to his saints. 
The pursuit of knowledge is one of the most fas- 
cinating employments of earth. Doubtless it will 
be the same in heaven. Christ will open wide 
the whole universe for our investigation, and he 
will open wide our faculties and powers of mind 
to do the investigating. We shall range the inter- 
minable skies with tireless wing and quenchless 
thirst of knowledge. Christ will take us every- 
where, and fill and refill with truth and light our 
enraptured spirits. We shall have royal power. 
Christ will reign supreme, and we shall reign 
with him. All endowments are for use, and the 
majestic endowments of the saints in light can 
not be for nothing. Christ cuts out our work 
for us on earth, and it is according to our capac- 
ity and the contracted spheres of time. He will 
do the same above. He makes kings on earth — 
kings in all dominions of thought and action ; he 
will make far more and greater kings in heaven. 
Perhaps your business may be to take your place 



Above 347 

as the presiding genius of some great world or 
system of worlds, or to teach new-born races of 
accountable beings the wonderful philosophy of 
redemption, to save them from Adam's fatal 
lapse, or to do some other stupendous work 
which surpasses all our present capability of im- 
agining. 

We shall have royal purity. God loves spot- 
less cleanness. This world was a clean world 
when God made it. It would be a clean world yet 
only for sin. There never was so spotlessly pure 
a man as Jesus Christ. His business on earth 
was to cleanse this world, and especially the soul 
of man. His blood cleanseth from all sin. Your 
heavenly garments will have neither spot nor 
wrinkle nor any such thing. Every song you 
sing will be a pure song. Every word you speak 
will be a pure word. Every thought you think 
will be a pure thought. Every ambition you 
cherish will be a pure ambition. Every path you 
tread will be a pure path. Every friend you meet 
will be a pure friend. Every work you do will 
be a pure work. All things there will be pure as 
God is pure. 

Our royal Brother will see that love is su- 



348 Christ the Apocalypse 

preme. Heaven is the home of love. All love 
radiates from heaven as light from the sun, and 
returns there again, only to go out in larger areas 
and richer blessing. God is love, and the highest 
expression of God's love is Christ, and the highest 
expression of Christ's love is his saints in glory, 
filled with love like his. We shall love our neigh- 
bor there as ourselves, and all saints and all angels 
will be our neighbors. The sweetest, fondest ten- 
dernesses of earth will be nothing to the fusion 
of hearts in heaven. I^ove will be our bliss, and 
a bliss that will grow larger and more intense 
as our heavenly acquaintance extends. 

Christ's saints will be progressive saints. 
There will be steps in light, and Christ will lead 
us onward and upward forever. God's knowl- 
edge and power and love are being constantly 
translated into new forms of active and glorious 
work. So will ours be. In Christ we will renew 
and surpass ourselves and our works continually 
and forever. Perpetuity is written on all things 
above. Eternity is the lifetime of Christ — Christ 
is the lifetime of eternity. Christ's saints are a 
part of himself and his mystical body. They will 
live while he lives. 



Above 349 

Son of God, we fall at thy feet in adoration 
and unspeakable amazement at thy love to us 
poor, sinful children of men. Past all compre- 
hension is indeed thy majesty and glory. Thy 
nature is to us a perpetual and ever-increasing 
revelation of a glory for which we can find no 
name, nor shape an adequate thought. All our 
most transcendent ideas of thee fall immeasurably 
short of what thou really art. Such knowledge 
is too high for us; we can not attain unto it. 
Forgive the meanness of our best attempts to 
speak of thee, to think of thee; and accept our 
grateful thanks that thy blessed Spirit has put 
some elevating conceptions of thee into our dark 
minds — some loving feelings towards thee into 
our cold hearts. 

Blessed Savior of men, we joyfully accept 
thee as our Prophet, our Priest, our King. We 
swear allegiance to thee as our rightful Lord and 
Master. We enthrone thee within our souls as 
our only Sovereign. We devote to thy supreme 
service the full strength of all our powers. We 
love thee, we will love thee, as we love nothing 
in earth or skies. 

O help us to speak to thee — to speak for 



35^ Christ the Apocalypse 

thee — without this painul straining of utterance. 
Enlarge our hearts, unloose our tongues, inflame 
our being, that, like the seraphim above, we may 
break forth into joy, and make the whole earth 
resound with thy praise! O that men would 
praise thee everywhere; that this earth might be 
filled with thy loving worshipers, that thy king- 
dom might come, and come now, in overpower- 
ing grandeur ; that the nations might be born 
into thy holy dominion, even in a day; that 
the majestic overflow of thy blessings yet to be 
might appear among men, even now ! 

O come quickly, blessed Savior of the world, 
in thy latter-day power, to uproot the last vestiges 
of evil, to reap the richer harvests of thy vic- 
torious death and glorious resurrection! 

May we, thy servants, be faithful to thee, 
and, through the infinite merits of thy cross, may 
we dwell with thee for evermore. Amen ! 



f£^ 2 1903 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: July 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





014 477 611 2 




